Newswatch Maneuvers En Route to the Summit

By Thomas Griffith

It has reached the point where only in the case of an accident--a plane crash, a bridge collapse or something equally unexpected--can a reader be reasonably sure that the facts haven't been bent or tampered with in advance.

The ways of manipulating the news by people in authority are many: creating false impressions, pretesting the public reaction to an action before taking it, even saying one thing while preparing to do the opposite. Those who manipulate the news now have a clear advantage over those who seek to report it and over a public trying to fathom what it all means. The ability to manipulate public opinion was systematized under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first President to give importance to the role of press secretary. It has become an art form under Ronald Reagan. The press's constant worry about being misled accounts for most of those acrimonious spats between White House reporters and presidential press secretaries. Larry Speakes is the latest to insist self-righteously on a narrow definition of his probity: it was the White House, not Speakes himself, that put out the misleading report that no biopsy had been performed on the President's skin cancer. But, protested ^ Helen Thomas of U.P.I., "you were not candid." Speakes: "Do you want to say that I did not tell the truth?" Thomas: "Aw, come on, get off of that!" Speakes: "No, you come on!" Thomas: "You pulled an iron curtain down on the truth." Speakes: "Exactly right. But I did not lie."

ABC's bullying Sam Donaldson ("So you're running your mouth so I can't speak?") insisted that Speakes has a duty, as in a court of law, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is nonsense, and Donaldson knows it. At times a press secretary speaks with fingers crossed behind his back. Government has no duty to reveal its private deliberations but risks its truthworthiness when it blatantly misleads. It is in such a context that news stories about the forthcoming summit meeting should be judged. Reagan and his advisers used to say that summits without well-prepared agendas could be harmful; now his people speak of a "get acquainted" meeting with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan has said that we cannot trust the evil empire; does this suggest he would not be interested in reaching agreements? That would trouble Europe and many Americans. His people spread the word that a start on relieving international tensions would crown Reagan's career. Gorbachev, with fewer constituencies to mollify or even to answer, is free to take the line that he is for peace, but is the other fellow? As interest builds for the summit, there comes the familiar manipulative effort by the Government to "lower public expectations." After nearly 40 years of cold war, is the public really so rashly optimistic?

Midst all these ploys and counterploys, the press has a hard time knowing what is really going on. Rarely, as with TIME's private session with Gorbachev, does it get a dramatic on-the-record interview with a principal.

Reagan, of course, submits himself to the entire White House press corps, though not as frequently as his predecessors. His senior aides, who are owlishly circumspect on the Sunday TV talk shows, can be more forthcoming in private interviews when guaranteed anonymity. The awkwardness of this arrangement is that the press can only hint that its information comes from the horse's mouth and that this particular horse is not just any old dray horse. Such anonymous sourcing is irritating to the reader, and a burden on the press's credibility, but remains a useful device to convey what really seems to be afoot.