Thirty Minutes With…; Brinkley

You're not in touch with my neighbor, are you? I hope he's not calling you. I'm doing the move. I hope he's not calling you. I hope he's not calling you.

David Brickley, NBC News correspondent, and Elizabeth Drew. David, I'd like to talk to you first about the controversy about the press. One of the other stores, Mr. Walter Cronkite says that the administration has an anti-press policy and there's a deliberate conspiracy to destroy the credibility of the press. Vice President says the press is paranoid. What do you think is going on? Well, it might be said that the vice president is paranoid. I'm not saying, and I simply say it might be said. The fact is that this controversy, as you know, is so old.

Franklin, I'm a little tired of it. I've been hearing it myself since Franklin Roosevelt and reading about it since George Washington. There's really nothing new about it except that in the case of the Agnes Nixon administration, it has become more hostile and more public than it was before. But I've heard Lyndon Johnson and private saying things about the press had made spiral agnes sound like Mary Puppens. I've heard him in an absolute profane rage. I guess you can't quote him in that case, can you? Well, the language is, so what's the FCC rule about language profanity and so on? You've got to come. Anyway, it was quite profane, quite angry. And as far as I know, it has always gone on. The primary difference now is that Agnew, a time or two, has referred in a very cute and a black way to the fact that television stations and networks hold government licenses, which is a fact we are somewhat familiar with.

And he's never explained why he bothered to mention that fact, unless it was an attempt to intimidate us. To scare us, to suggest or imply that if we didn't straighten up, they'd take our licenses away. Lyndon Johnson once threatened a reporter who did something it didn't like with having his tax return examined. Well, examined means having one of those ham-handed tax agents of theirs go over it with a microscope looking for mistakes, which they can always find. And there was another kind of intimidation. So again, there's really nothing new about it except that they have made more of a point of it, more of a public point than any other administration I know of. What do you think that they're talking about the FCC and licensing means that they are trying to be more intimidationists, if that's what you're going to work? I think to understand this and to put it in a some kind of perspective, I think people should think about the general attitude of politician, not Agnew particularly, but most of, nearly all of them on this subject. There's something about the psychic drives that cause politicians to go into politics in the first place.

I think to a great extent it is some kind of seeking of public approval, performing their work, pursuing their profession. On a public stage, and anyone who performs in public is, is of course subject criticism, whether he's playing a harmonica and a Lowes Palace stage or whether he is a member of the U.S. Senate or vice president of the United States. And when you take all their attacks on the news media and all their criticisms and get down to the basic point, the basic point of all of it is that we should praise them. That's all. It's precisely the same as what Gertrude Stein said about writers. She said writers want only three things, praise, praise, and praise, and it's precisely the same with politicians.

You or I or any of us could write or broadcast tomorrow the most biased, distorted, inaccurate, unfair news story about a politician. But if it made him look good, he'd never say a word. I've noticed that. Never say a word. So long as you praise them, they're very happy and you're a wonderful fellow. If you report a piece of news, honestly, accurately, and fairly, it makes them look bad, then you're a biased. Don't you think there's something else, too, when you were talking about the presidents and white houses and going back to Roosevelt that George Reedy, who was the press secretary under Johnson, talks about that the White House itself gets isolated. They talk about press being isolated, but the White House does, too, and gets a little paranoid itself. And remember Kennedy cutting off the subscription to the Herald Trib because he didn't like what he was saying. I don't think there's something peculiarly important that happens when people get behind that fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, even maybe more than happens to regular politicians.

Well, I think it's, I think it happens in the White House to an exaggerated degree. They are literally, and to some extent, figuratively, behind an iron picket fence. I do know, personally, that President Kennedy, for one, was always unhappy about this. What he really would like would have liked to do was to go out and walk the streets and stop people and talk to them and ask questions and circulate like an ordinary private citizen, which, of course, he couldn't do. I remember one time he mentioned, I think he was some oriental, trying to think the type I can't. His name was Haroon L. Rashid, who used to be, I think he was an emer or something. Anyway, Sultan, one of those. He used to put on disguises and go out in the street, pretending not to be the emperor or whatever.

And talk to people as if he were just an ordinary citizen and ask them questions and so on, and find out what they really were thinking to avoid having it all filtered through his advisors and his yes-men. The staff at the White House, like the staff at I imagine, General Motors, tells the boss as far as possible what they think he wants to hear. And if the news is bad, they know he doesn't want to hear it. So they're reluctant to tell him. So people in the White House, the president, the others do indeed get cut off. And they see things from their own particular viewpoint, as, of course, we all do. And then when they read the papers and turn on a television program and it doesn't come out precisely as they think it should come out, then they assume we are out to get them and so on. Proof of the fact that this is not the case is that every president I know in both parties has made the same complaints. So we're antagonizing all presidents in all parties. We must be doing something right.

You remember President Johnson used to keep three television monitors in his office and tickers in the current administration made a big thing about the fact that they'd put those away. Now there's this rather famous news digest, which one of the president's aides prepares for him. That's right. Does it worry you that that's how President Nixon is finding out what's going on? Well, it doesn't worry me so far as I'm concerned. It does concern me that that's all he knows about what's on the air and in the papers. I saw a copy of one of them once and it was so biased. Really? Yes. That whoever wrote it, I assume it was Buchanan. I don't know. Whoever wrote it was so biased. He would not be able to recognize bias on a part of anyone else. When someone says you're a bias list, as you know, what he means is that your biases are not the same as my biases. A biased opinion is simply an opinion you do not agree with. That's all.

I was changing something a little bit. When Vice President Agnew made his first comments, it was at fall of 69. It was quite an uproar. That's suggested to me at least that he'd struck a chord somewhere that he was on to something that there are. There is a problem that people have with us press television and that he struck that problem. Don't you think there's something to that? Well, let me say first, I certainly do not intend to say here that the press and television press meaning all of this. Are blameless and that we're paradigms of virtue and perfection. We certainly are not. There are numerous people in our business who I wish were in some other business, like insurance. I thought you could name some people. No, I don't have to do that. The surprising thing about, first of all, to get to your question, you may remember that in 1964, when the Republicans nominated Senator Goldwater in San Francisco,

former President Eisenhower made a speech at the convention and used the term Sensation Seeking Columnous and Commentators. Well, the audience in the hall almost went wild, stood in their chairs, shouted, angry, shaking their fists. Frankly, I was a little bit, I wondered what was going to happen. If he had said ten more words, he could have turned them into a mob because they really were in a rage that I was 64, which shows, among other things, that this antagonism for the news media has been there quite a long time. And what I wonder about Agnew is what took him so long. It's been there all these years among people who feel that they have been misled, abused, lied to, and probably, in many cases, have. That's what I was going to ask you.

There's some basis for this. Yes, I think there is. Frankly, I don't think television is as guilty of it as the newspapers because we came along rather late. Television news, as a matter of any substance at all, is only about 15 years old. Before that, it was just mainly newsreels and ship launching and horse races and that sort of jump. But we all know that throughout most of American history, we have had a printed press in this country, which was, in many cases, outrageously biased. I think it's better now. I think it's much better now. But we all know that various papers in this country have refused to print news that didn't suit their political views. And as I say, it's better, but it has not all together disappeared. I would not say that everything that has ever been on television in the way of news has been fair and accurate and unbiased. I certainly do not say that.

What I say is that now we do try, at least on the networks. We do try. And I think we may not be very good, but in most cases we're fair. What happens on all the local stations across the country? Frankly, I don't know because I can't see no one does. But the answer to your question, I think, is yes, there was some basis for it. Whether it's right or wrong, if the American people think they're not being told the truth, then there is a basis for complaint. No, I've been wondering from the polls tell us that the people don't think the government is telling them the truth. That may not be so new either, but it seems to have been exacerbated by the war. I wonder if that and the disbelief of the press are kind of coming together. They see us all in the same boat here and just don't believe the press or the government is part of the same process. Well, I've had to be very healthy. I think a skepticism on the part of the people toward the politicians and bureaucrats who reigns so pompously and often so arrogantly in Washington, very often behaving like Marie Antoinette before her head was cut off.

If the public is skeptical of that crowd, frankly, I don't blame them. They ought to be. I am. I hope you are. I believe very little of what they say. I believe nothing of what they say unless I have some other reason to believe it's true. Unless you can check it out. Yes. I think it's a very healthy skepticism on the part of the American people, but there is one little point. When the government puts out a statement, and I'm not talking particularly about the Nixon administration, because it's been true in both parties, several presidents back, when the government puts out a statement that is, if not an outright lie, at least deceptive, and we report it, they get mad at us. They should get mad at the government, because we, in that case, are passing along their distortions, which we are not always able to check as in the case of the military, leaders, military, and civilian leaders four or five, six years ago, talking about the light at the end of the tunnel. And we're going to be out of Vietnam by Christmas. What was that? Christmas of 65 or 65?

Well, that happened to be an utter and total deception. But at the time, I didn't know it, and I put it on air as stated. So if people get mad at that, they should get mad at Bob McNamara, not at us. One of the complaints of the current administration, others have made it, too, is that the Washington Press Corps is predominantly liberal. And Mr. Agnew calls it the Seaboard Media, and he talks about the New York, Washington, Manhattan, Washington, intellectual media complex. There's something to that, don't you think, Dave? Yeah, I do, I think primarily the predominantly press, at least in this part of the country, is somewhat liberal. Why is that, do you think? I don't think it is so much that reporters are liberal, as it is, that liberals become reporters. The same question, the same fact, and I think it's a fact, applies, say, to academics, college faculties.

I think most professors are liberal, for the same reason, not because being a professor makes you a liberal, but being a liberal is more likely to make you a professor. I think people of that point of view are more attracted to something of at least semi-literary, semi-intellectual nature than they are to business pursuits operating stores in this event. Or insurance. Or insurance, or whatever it may be. I think that probably is true, that the majority of the press, reporters, gain all of it. At least in the East, and at least in my experience, are more liberal than otherwise. Then inevitably comes a question, does it affect what they do?

Yes, that's a question which I'm sorry I can't answer in any sort of general buckshot gunway. I suspect in some cases it does. I think that very often in some elements of the Eastern news media, a person of notably conservative views, has to go a little farther to get a fairy a little further to get a fair shake than a liberal does. I think that probably is true. In the other hand, the conservative columnists are doing all right, aren't they? I guess so. It's hard to tell whether a columnist is doing well or badly. No, they don't tell us. I wanted to ask you a little bit about broadcast journalism since that's your business. We're told, and it must be true, that this is where most people get their news. Do you really think that broadcast journalism can do the job enough to let people know, understand what's happening that's a little unfairly put? No, no.

Does it worry you that you have that half-hour period? If people who tune in our program every night do not read or see anything else, then they're not keeping themselves very well in phone. We're quite aware of our limitations. They are severe, and I have never have claimed to do any sort of thorough job of covering the news. And that's claimed to be ridiculous. We can't. We can't put on the air one-tenth of what's in a good newspaper, sizable newspaper. What we do is put on what we put on, and that's the best we can do. And for what it is, for what it is, I think it's okay. But it certainly is not by any means a thorough and satisfactory news service. If you expect to be aware of what's happening in this country and the world, and to understand it, you have to do some reading. You have to read some newspapers, some magazines, books.

Talking a little bit more about what you put on isn't part of it determined by whether it's a televisable event. There's just that skew what gets on. No, it doesn't affect what gets on, but it does affect how long it is on. If we have a big story like, say, a tax increase, or a price increase, or something like that, which has absolutely no picture possibilities, we will certainly always put it on, but maybe not as long, because I can tell it well or badly in half a minute or a minute or whatever it takes. But if it's a picture story involving a lot of physical aspects, it's likely to run longer than that. And it's just the nature of the medium, and there isn't really much we can do about it. If we put on a television program in which we all sat there and talked for all night and never had any pictures, I don't think anybody would tune it in. And it wouldn't really be right anyway, because...

It would be careful. Well, this isn't a news program. I think in some cases where the news does have a visual aspect, we can and do add an important element, making it possible for people to see and hear the shape and tone and color and texture and quality of it, which cannot be done in words. But isn't this led among other things? I don't mean to say it's throwing accusation. Well, I don't know. The pseudo events, for instance, of politicians have learned, for example, that press corps is pretty bored with press conferences or television has decided it's not a televisable event. So they walk through streets or scuba dive or go up in hot air balloons or something like that. Or I'm told that kids who want to disrupt a commencement are just marvelous at figuring out where the cameras are going to be, so that you're sure to not you, but they're sure to turn on them. Aren't they playing the game?

Well, they're playing a game. And so it's television. No, not necessarily. I think we're a little smarter than that. I think we know when people are putting on shows for our benefit and a show or performance of whatever it may be, like that usually is highly uninteresting. Quite boring, quite obvious, transparent, thin, empty, and meaningless. And so in most cases, we don't pay any attention to them. Somebody is always funding us and saying we're going to have this or that on the capital steps at 11 o'clock tomorrow. And they still think that anything that happens on the capital steps will have a television camera turned on it. Well, quite contrary. We almost never mess with that. And it is not to say that we don't cover any sort of organized or planned event. We do. A presidential press conference is an organized planned event. It is not a spontaneous happening. It's planned and scheduled.

And we cover it. And the fact that something is planned and scheduled does not necessarily make it a non-event. It's one that lies within somebody's control. And you could, by the same token, say that an agnew speech was a non-event. Because it was not spontaneous. It was scheduled in advance. Well, that doesn't make it any more or any less than it would have been otherwise. With the lines that he knows are going to get the camera back. Sure. Well, that's as old as recorded history lives. If you want people to pay attention to you, then you say something interesting. We're always being asked, as you know, about how can you be sure that you're being objective and fair. You were hearing you a couple of years ago. You didn't really think you could be objective, but you could be fair. I always quote you on that. I was very struck by it. Well, I think that's true. When our critics say we are not objective, what they usually mean is that we are not objective, they are away.

I have, as I'm sure you have, over the years got a lot of mayo from people who tuned us in to love it, was favorable, and a little of it was not, or is not. And they say, you said this and that and this and that, and I didn't agree with you, and you're biased. I never have got one saying you said this and that, and I agreed with you, and you're biased. If they agree, you're not biased. That means if they agree, that means you're telling you absolute, straight, unvarnished truth. To be objective is to be some kind of machine, to have no feelings, no thoughts, no likes, no dislikes, to be in favor of nothing, against nothing, to be say something like a telephone, whatever goes in one end comes out the other end, unchanged. That's impossible for a human being. I really think anyone, if there were anyone who was truly objective,

he probably would be some kind of mental case, who ought to be locked up somewhere as a danger to society, because he would have no standards, no values, no nothing. No, I'm not objective, I hope you're not. I know you're not. We'll let that go with that. Another complaint that's made about us, all of us in Washington, is that we get too involved with our sources here. We mingle with them too much. We protect them too much. Do you think there's validity to that? Yeah. So do I. Yes, I do. We've been picking out any administration as being isolated, but Washington Press Corps gets isolated too. Certainly does. It comes to be involved too much with the people here. It comes to be to intimate and friendly and socially involved with people in the news, which is awkward and difficult.

It comes to be involved too much, I think, in the minutiae of bureaucratic operations here. I hear entirely too much on the air, and in the papers about this subcommittee of that, reported out the second version of the conference report and this and that and so on. And when you get four miles outside of Washington, A, they don't know what you're talking about, and B, they don't care, and C, there's no reason why they should. No, worse than that, we talk about it over dinner too. Yes, that's true. As you've noticed. Yes, I know. A few years ago, when was it you pulled out of Washington, saying you'd had it with all that, and then you came back. How do you, how do you find it now, or did you, did you miss it? I moved to New York for a while. I'm for about a year, but not really for that reason. I just wanted to change. I'd been here for too long. But I didn't really like living in New York, so I came back here. Did you find the tone here now any different than it has been in the last 10 or 15 years? Not a great deal. There are a few minor changes in detail, but overall,

this town is sort of like a great big steamboat that keeps going its own way, regardless of which way the wind blows, or how the elections go, or how the current goes. It keeps going, and it might move one degree in one direction, or one degree in another direction, but essentially it keeps going the same direction. It goes on grinding out paper, spending money, hiring people, getting bigger and bigger, and more troublesome all the time, and nothing seems to affect it. Presidents don't affect it. Every president I've known, or known of, has complained about the fantastically cumbersome size of this establishment here. As far back as Harry Truman, I was covering the White House. Truman said, I thought I was president, but when it comes to these bureaucracies, I can't make them do a damn thing.

And every president since then, I know I was made the same complaint. Kennedy made the same complaint a little more elegantly. Lyndon Johnson, a little less elegantly. Now, I don't think it's changed all that much, Liz. Some of the faces have changed. The policies, to some extent, of White House policies, which are not necessarily the bureaucratic policies. The president is really not able to do much about the bureaucracy. It keeps going its own way, and he issues proclamations from not this president, and any president. You don't find Nixonian Washington different from? Not a great deal. The New Frontier? Not a great, well. Come on. If you're talking about the operations of the government itself, no, I don't. If you're talking about the private or social or whatever term you like, seen around 10. Yes, it is somewhat different. We have to stop now, David. Thank you so much for coming and talking about it. Thank you, Liz.

30 minutes with NBC News correspondent David Brinkley and Elizabeth Drew, writer and Washington editor for the Atlantic Monthly. This is PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service. The Public Broadcasting Service, the Public Broadcasting Service. The Public Broadcasting Service.