Keeping 'Em Down on the Farm

Like certain other hunting animals, professional journalists do not thrive in captivity. Confined to a single place for any length of time with no news to cover, they tend to turn sour and surly. That has certainly been the case recently in Jimmy Carter's home town of Plains, Ga., to which the candidate returned for a lengthy working vacation after winning the Democratic presidential nomination last month in New York. A report from TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, captive in Plains:

The upward of 50 reporters, photographers, network-TV cameramen and technicians who accompanied Carter to Plains were at first pleased with the change of pace from Manhattan and the long primary trail. Now, however, they are suffering from advanced ennui and frustration--enhanced by South Georgia's sauna-like summer climate and the bountiful swarms of gnats, chiggers and fire ants. Exulted the Boston Globe's Curtis Wilkie, himself a native of the Deep South, as he prepared to escape from Plains on a vacation: "Free at last, free at last, great God a-mighty, ah'm free at last."

Nature of Sin. The basic problem, of course, is that there is no hard news. During strategy sessions in his sprawling ranch house with aides and advisers, Carter may be--probably is--making decisions that will vitally shape the course of the oncoming presidential campaign, scheduled to begin in earnest after Labor Day. But the security blanket of secrecy imposed on such decisions by Carter and his staff has been virtually total. Reporters have thus had to content themselves with scratching about for some interesting stories about the early days of Plains and the economic impact of Carter's candidacy on the little hamlet, plus such lightweight footnotes as the candidate's appearances in Sunday school, his attendance at a Carter clan reunion and his pitching performances (fairly expert) in a series of Softball games organized by CBS-TV Producer Rick Kaplan. An unremarkable sermon on the nature of sin by the pastor of the Plains Baptist Church has been covered and grudgingly reported by the wire services. Says a correspondent for a major Northern daily: "I keep telling my desk that there's no story down here, and they keep saying, 'Yeah, we understand the problem, but give us a story today anyway.' " Even photographers, who for a time enjoyed shooting the candidate in his natural habitat, have grown bored by the daily replay of the down-home theme.

Carter's triumph has brought pack journalism to Plains with a vengeance.

CBS, NBC and ABC have all set up giant, equipment-laden trailers under the town water tower that functions as an antenna. A couple of dozen reporters flock around Press Secretary Jody Powell and Campaign Manager Hamilton Jordan, recording their every word as they conduct a "briefing" alongside the railroad tracks in Plains--even though to date they have provided only the most fleeting glimpses of the inner workings of the post-primary campaign. Afterward, reporters grumble to each other about excessive secrecy and "news management," and file stories soured by bitterness.

Mutual Antagonism. Meantime, Carter and crew have become somewhat cynical and resentful. They argue, accurately enough, that they have attempted to discourage constant, pointless coverage of the candidate's every step. But even as they criticize reporters for homing in on trivia, Carter and the Plains guard refuse to give out much information that is other than trivial. Instead, they engineer "photo opportunities," as the Nixon White House first christened them, at fish fries and ball games that provide a steady stream of non-event pictures. The result has been a growing feeling of mutual antagonism between the Carterites and the press. Even the usually amiable Powell has grown testy and has begun grousing publicly about some of the stories cranked out. At a press conference last week, he was asked by ABC's Sam Donaldson when the fall campaign may be said to have formally begun. "Well, it's certainly clear," Powell snapped, "that the campaign will start whenever Sam Donaldson says it starts."

To relieve the tension, members of the press corps, who have encamped at the Best Western Motel in nearby Americus because Plains is too small to accommodate them, spend most of their free time eating and drinking in the area's only good restaurant (Faye's Bar-B-Que Villa on the outskirts of Amer-icus), playing softball (with recurrent arguments about whether the games should be for fun or to win) and watching --courtesy of CBS--rerun movies on video tape (MASH, Jaws, Gone With the Wind).

The reporters were plainly delighted last week when Carter made a brief foray to New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.--and were looking forward to a return to the hectic business of covering the campaign full time in the fall. Once into that, they may find themselves in the throes of nostalgia for the long, lazy summer days in Plains.

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