Your Story, but My Life

Perhaps the strongest opinions, fair or unfair, about journalism are held by people who have been thrust into the news by their jobs or by extraordinary circumstances. Some of their views:

Richard Allen resigned as President Reagan's National Security Adviser in January 1982, following allegations that he had improperly accepted gifts from Japanese journalists and businessmen. He was cleared of wrongdoing.

We were held captive in our house by the media from roughly mid-November to early January. This was all day, every day. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, wedding anniversary, birthdays. They would begin to come at about 5:30 in the morning. I would be forced to respond at 6:30 a.m. upon leaving the house. When I had nothing to say, they tried other ways to get a story. A CBS reporter tried to question my six-year-old daughter Kimberly, on her way to kindergarten : "Is your daddy home?" My kids were afraid to go out. Another CBS correspondent tried to find out whether Japanese businessmen were paying my bill at my favorite sushi shop. He gave the man who runs the shop the impression he was from the Government, and the man produced the bills, which I had paid myself. That was absolutely unforgivable.

The problem is that the process feeds on itself. The Washington Post would run a story outlining new and anonymous innuendos directed against me and the network news directors would all feel driven by competitive pressure to try to get a response. The remedy is self-restraint.

Mary Cunningham is co-owner, with her husband William Agee, of Semper Enterprises Inc., a venture capital and consulting firm. She formed many of her opinions about the press three years ago after reading numerous stories about her relationship with Agee, then her boss at Bendix Corp.

I am a big believer in First Amendment freedoms, the fundamental right of the freedom of speech and the right to express one's views. But I feel just as strongly that these do not give editors the right to take license with other people's freedoms. A line should be drawn between the public's right and need to know, and something that would be interesting or titillating to know. I'm not saying there are not good, responsible journalists. But the power of the press to change lives and sway opinion is awesome and the public, for good reason, is fearful of this power. The media must realize that the First Amendment rights do not necessarily take priority over the individual's right to life, liberty, privacy and the pursuit of happiness.

Richard Hatcher is serving his fifth term as mayor of Gary, Ind.

I've always felt the national press has been reasonably fair with me. It has been just the opposite with the local media, which have been about as inaccurate, biased and unfair as any that you could find in the country. I was the first black mayor of this city, and they've not quite forgiven me for that. There has been a real effort to distort, in a negative sense, what the city is about, what's going on within the city, its problems and its progress. I was just re-elected with 90% of the vote. After the election, the Post-Tribune wrote in an editorial: "There is no consensus on his leadership among the people of Gary." I don't know what kind of consensus you need to be elected mayor of Gary five times and to win every race you've run in the past 20 years. When the University of Chicago released a study last October showing how 62 cities were governed with regard to fiscal policy and Gary came out No. 1, they never even wrote the story. Anything that reflects something in a positive sense, they're not much interested in. The national media seem to be more professional.

I think the media have not been fair to minorities in this country. It's not what they say, it's what they don't say. About the only time you really see blacks giving their opinions, or given any serious space, is when it relates to minorities or civil rights. That seems to be the only time the media feel we are competent enough to express opinions.

Eppie Lederer, 65, is better known as Syndicated Advice Columnist Ann Landers.

When I was getting divorced in 1975, reporters and camera crews were camped out for days in my lobby and on the sidewalk outside. They came from all over the country. Foreign reporters too. It was terrible. My neighbors could barely get in and out of the building. One reporter, who had been a friend of mine, got up to my apartment after conning the doorman into believing that she was there on a personal visit. I wouldn't let her in. She just wanted to talk, she said. I was certain that she had a camera and wanted a picture of me looking depressed or anguished. I just couldn't believe this attempt to invade my privacy. TV is the worst. TV reporters present themselves as having the perfect right to be anywhere, to ask any question. It doesn't matter how personal the matter may be.

People don't trust the press the way they used to. Stories are sensationalized. Some papers print things that simply are not true. In many papers, if a correction runs, it's usually buried back with the pimple creams and truss ads. I've received hundreds of letters from people asking me how do you know what's true in the press these days. I find it difficult to respond sometimes. I tell them that there are good newspapers and serious, responsible and honest reporters. Don't judge all of us by the standards of the bad ones. Unless the guys at the top crack down--the editors and the news directors--pretty soon no one is going to believe anything they read in the papers or see on television news.

Frank Mankiewicz was George McGovern 's political director in 1972 and until last June was president of financially troubled National Public Radio, which faced a deficit of almost $8 million when he resigned.

Sooner or later everybody will know the dirty little secret of American journalism, that the reports are wrong. Because sooner or later everybody will have been involved in something that is reported. Whenever you see a news story you were part of, it is always wrong. It may be a rather unimportant error, but it can also be an important one. Without exception, the reporting about the financial crisis at National Public Radio earlier this year was wrong. For the most part it was written by people who did not want to take the trouble to look into what was essentially a business story, rather than treat it as a show-biz story.

When McGovern announced recently that he was running for President, every reporter I encountered was intent on portraying him as a loser, as the Harold Stassen of his party. I told them, on the record, that McGovern still ranked third in the polls, that he had scored an upset victory in winning the nomination in 1972, and that he was running for President for only the second time. To my knowledge, I was not quoted by any of them, and they all went out and wrote "Loser McGovern" stories. The press does do some things well. It is very good at spotting incipient candidacies in the early months of a presidential campaign. The resolution of the two great issues in our time, Watergate and Viet Nam, were made possible only by an alert and accurate press.

Joan Kennedy's divorce from Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts became final this week. She now lives in Boston.

After being in the public eye for 25 years, I have discovered that what helps the press helps me. There are a lot of things that are very private about my life that I wouldn't discuss with anybody. My divorce may have been overblown by some accounts, but Ted and I never said anything to anyone. The media knew we wouldn't talk and they respected that. There are some things that are better dealt with in a direct, straightforward manner. For instance, my alcoholism. It was a leap of faith that I took in 1979 when I decided to talk to reporters about how my problem developed and how I solved it--a leap of faith that I would be treated fairly. I was. I know the press is just trying to do its job when they ask questions. They can ask, and I can choose whether to answer.

Letha Kimm, 66, of Atlantic, Iowa, lost her son Edward, 33, a Marine, in the Beirut bombing two months ago.

The reporters were all kind and considerate. I can't complain at all. Before Ed's death, my experience with the press had just been watching news conferences with the President. But the ones who talked to me didn't behave at all the way they do at those news conferences. They all just sort of took their turn. One person asked a question, and the others just listened. They were kind the way they talked to me, and they were sympathetic. They were not pushy. In some ways I was surprised that I was quoted accurately. I know that sometimes reporters change around things you say, but I don't think they did with me. They were real polite. They were so gentle with my two little granddaughters. Even the television people didn't use as many lights as I had expected, and the cameras weren't a problem.

The only time I got annoyed was when a photographer took my picture while I was crying on the telephone. I wasn't able to tell him to stop or go away, I was so busy crying. But I just figured they wanted a picture of me breaking down. They did put that picture in the paper. That was the only thing that made me a little put out. I was able to keep my cool up until then.

They couldn't figure out why I wasn't bitter. I guess the reporters ran into some people who were. But there was nothing to be bitter about. That was my boy's life. He was fighting for our freedom. If he hadn't been, we wouldn't be able to talk to the press in this country. I surely wouldn't like to live the way they do in some other countries.

Gerry Spence of Jackson, Wyo., is an attorney who specializes in defending clients wronged by large institutions. He usually wins.

The press is in the business of selling, and good deeds don't sell. What does sell is gloom and fear and crime and deceit. The press can poison a jury fast. Often, there is a rush to find guilt. Along the way, they deprive defendants of any presumption of innocence. There's a conscious effort to go after anyone big. The only place John De Lorean could get a fair trial would be in a monastery with twelve deaf-mute monks. There's a tendency to overexpose our leaders. Anybody who wants to be a public figure these days is crazy. It's open season on all of them. There's a need for heroes and leaders, but we cut them down too readily. What you really need is more stories on the goodness of people. The press doesn't report neighbor helping neighbor. There's a great market to tell people that they're good. They hunger for that. The bottom line is that the press is both a blessing and a detriment to our system. It's a great guardian to be able to run to with abuses. I need it to protect my clients. A free society has to have a free press. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.