The Press Has Lost Its Watergate Edge

Newswatch

In one of Virginia Woolfs novels a woman character remarks: "I am made and remade constantly. Different people draw different words from me." As much can hardly be said of Messrs. Carter, Begin and Sadat. From them different interviewers rarely draw different words, however clever or persistent the questioning. Begin and Sadat in particular are expert at saying what they want to say, and no more, to American interviewers.

They do so even though English is not their first tongue. (What is better for the Palestinians--self-rule or self-determination? "They are not so different, Barbara," Sadat answers calmly.) One has to go back nearly a third of a century, to Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Mo., to find a foreign leader so skilled at, and so preoccupied with, influencing American opinion.

Perhaps we are witnessing the final reversal of the Watergate era, when the press corps had a hectoring ascendancy over public figures. In journalism, as in arms races or in games like football, there are times when either the offense or the defense is dominant. Currently, in the ongoing contest between leaders who want to put their own viewpoint across and journalists who seek to pin them down or to draw them out, the offense prevails.

Several explanations are possible. The competitive rivalry at the networks to get leaders like Sadat and Begin on camera probably inhibits too rude questioning of them. Or, since anchor people are no longer kept at the door or at the curbside but are invited in, deferred to and first-named by heads of state, they may feel themselves part of the diplomatic process, and may be fearful of derailing it. The imperial presidency and jet-age diplomacy are producing a matching elite of imperial commentators. For whatever reason, some hard questions go unpressed. Who, for example, demands of King Hussein whether he proposes to give Palestinians more democracy than he allows in the rest of his country?

Jimmy Carter, who seems forever to be clarifying or climbing down from remarks, may seem an exception to the dominance of politicians. But he was not drawn into most of his gaffes, indiscretions or overstatements by being caught off guard by a reporter's question. In his distaste for Nixon's rehearsed and calculatingly misleading utterances, Carter chooses to wing it, as if spontaneity proves the honesty of his intentions.

But this gets him into excesses of rhetoric. Carter digs his own trapholes--the idealist devoted to human rights can be downright fulsome when meeting dictators. Why, asked Columnist William F. Buckley Jr., did Carter, in a situation that called for only ambiguous politeness, say that the Communist leaders of Poland and the autocratic Shah of Iran share the same ideals that we do?

Though diplomats may shudder, Carter is pretty talented at getting out of his remarks. Sometimes this amounts to repudiating a position, but Carter seems more bent on showing that at least he hadn't meant to deceive anyone. His soft-voiced answers at press conferences (with which he is generous) or in friendly televised White House "conversations" turn away wrath. Gerald Ford achieved the same effect. Such an improvement in Government and press manners is welcome, but there have been times when a little asperity on either side did a better job of illuminating an issue.

The current advantage of the offense shows best in two recent episodes at less imperial levels. The Governor of Tennessee, Ray Blanton, has told statehouse reporters that those who don't "think positive and write positive positively won't get their questions answered." Pete Rozelle, the shrewd boss of professional football, was plagued this past season by flagrantly bad official calls, seen by millions on instant replay. Reporters sought the right to interview officials after the game, and Rozelle finally relented at the Super Bowl, but only after specifying "if we get objective people to form a news pool, not some people who just want to badger officials." This kind of blatant appeal for tame press treatment exemplifies the new dominance.

But if a perceived arrogance in the press led it to lose its ascendancy after Watergate, arrogance on the other side can only invite a return swing of the pendulum.

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