At Issue; 19; The President and the Press

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. National Educational Television presents At Issue, a commentary on events and people in the news. At Issue, this week, the President and the Press. Commentator is Ed Bailey, Public Affairs Editor of National Educational Television.

There is no question that President Lyndon Johnson in his first two months in office has received a good press. This, I think, reflected a feeling of respect in the part of newspaper and television reporters who were impressed by the manner in which Mr. Johnson managed the transition of power following President Kennedy's death. And by the vigorous way in which he began the job of pushing legislation through a stubborn Congress. Disrespect is still there, but in recent weeks an undercurrent of reaction has set in among many of the reporters who cover President Johnson regularly. To some reporters, the Johnson Public Relations campaign has seemed too aggressive. Others resent the President's extreme sensitivity to what he reads in the newspapers about himself. A tone of criticism or ridicule has begun to creep into some stories and commentaries in the last two weeks. Ten days ago, President Johnson had a Saturday conference in the White House, East Auditorium, where Mr. Roosevelt used to watch movies. It was a very minor point, almost silly, but this question was symptomatic.

Many of us are wondering why you would hold a news conference in a cramped little room such as this. Limited to about 90 newsmen when you have facilities available to accommodate all newsmen such as the State Department. I don't have an answer to that question of yours. I thought that this would be ample to take care of your needs. I'm sorry if you find yourself uncomfortable. It was much more convenient to come here at the time that I could come. I was attempting to satisfy the newsman. It's somewhat difficult to do sometimes, but they wanted the news conference this week. I thought this was the appropriate place and could be best handled here. To a President, the news media offered his principal means of communication with the American people. It is the newspaper story, the magazine article, or the television commentary that determines the issues of the day, in which creates the impressions that lead to decisions in the halls of Congress and at the polls.

Every President, of course, tries to use the press to his own advantage, to promote his policies and to ensure his own or his party's succession to office. Reporters, on the other hand, generally try to resist being used. This game never ends. It is often said that a reporter should be objective, but objectivity, even if that is what a reporter is striving for, is a myth. A reporter constantly makes personal judgments, and if he believes that a candidate or an official is a fraud, a liar, or a great man, this opinion will show through when the accounts he sends his newspaper. Have relations between President Johnson and the individuals who make up the Washington press corps really deteriorated? If they have, the effect might be to weaken Mr. Johnson's hand with the Congress, to cut his strength at the polls next November, and ultimately to affect the judgment of history upon his time in office. In a few minutes, we will talk about these things with some members of the White House press. But the situation is not new. It was a hundred years ago that the first real press interview was granted a reporter. It was granted by the first President Johnson after Lincoln was shot.

The first President to really make effective use of the press, and particularly the press conference, was President Roosevelt. A man who covered the first Roosevelt press conference is Gardner Jackson, better known as Pat. He came to Washington from Boston as a young reporter, and later became one of Mr. Roosevelt's close friends and advisors. What about that first conference, Pat? Terrific experience, Ed. Here was a man of such confidence that it radiated throughout the PAC office. He rubbed me the wrong way at first because he seemed to be acting. He would dodge heads to get the face of every questioner before he would answer. But as the press conference wore on, I realized this was because he really was interested in the individual reporter. He was agile and gay and facile in his handling of questions. And there was no question in my mind that he was not only interested in the human being reporter, he was interested in the subject matter.

The President Truman changed the press conference by putting it on the record and by permitting radio broadcasts. He also allowed reporters to intrude on his famous early morning walks. He never achieved the same popularity with reporters that Roosevelt did, but he did win respect as a straight shooter. Congressman Ken Heckler of West Virginia served in the White House under Mr. Truman. Ken, how did Mr. Truman get on with the press? President Truman was much more informal in his press conferences, even though he started out by holding them in his office as did President Roosevelt. One day, some reporter squirted some ink or dropped a cigarette butt on that rug in President Truman's office, and the President said, that's it, get them out of here, and he moved them across the way to the old executive office building where it was a little bit more formal. But President Truman regarded the press as a great instrument of communication with the American nation and the public.

And from these press conferences, I think he merged the image of a man of courage who faced up to and made the most important decisions in the post-war era. It has often said that President Eisenhower felt more at home with publishers than with reporters. As press conferences, the first to be televised, sometimes produced rather heated exchanges. Murray Snyder, a political reporter for the Old Brooklyn Eagle in the New York Herald Tribune, became Assistant Press Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Defense under Mr. Eisenhower. President Eisenhower had had daily dealings with newsmen of all nations during his years as Supreme Allied Commander and Chief Staff. So coming to the White House was not a novel experience. He had good relations with the press and they treated each other with mutual respect. About the only things that would upset the President and his press relations was when something would appear that he considered to be a violation of security or really damaging to the country, such as a leak of something that might have happened in a secure meeting.

But this didn't happen very often. He operated on the basis of very simple principles, treat everyone fairly and give no one exclusives or the leaks I talked about. So when you added up, when he left the White House, his relations with the press were excellent and they still are. I could add that when he inaugurated the live coverage of press conferences for radio and television, it was the result of his being convinced that this was a better way to communicate with the country. It wasn't any desire to use the communications media, it was merely a sign of his recognition that this was progress in public communication. I think it is generally acknowledged that no recent President was better liked by the press or got more out of the press than President Roosevelt.

But President Kennedy ran him a close second. John F. Kennedy had a genuine affinity for reporters and a real interest in the trade. Many of his close friends, both before and after he became President, were newspaper men. He had a sense of detachment, which some people thought was an unfortunate trait in a man of action. But this detachment and his ironic humor matched closely the outlook of a reporter and there was a kinship. He did get angry with newspapers, especially in his first year and reporters sometimes got personal calls asking why they had handled the story the way they did. But either he grew more philosophical about this or he was too busy to keep it up. In the light of this background, we are going to examine the press relations of the President of the White House, Lyndon Johnson. We have with us Peter Lizzagore, Washington bureau chief, the Chicago Daily News. Charles Bartlett writes a syndicated column for the Chicago Sun Times and Philip Potter, sometimes Washington correspondent for the Baltimore Sun. To lead into our discussion, let's listen to an appraisal from one of the foremost students of the American press, the curator of the Neiman Foundation at Harvard, Louis Lyons, speaking from Boston.

The press relations of the President are the net effect of a good many things. It's pretty early to add these up for President Johnson with any assurance. His relations with the Washington press corps are bound to be of a quite different nature from President Kennedy's. He lacks the Kennedy style and he cannot evoke the intellectual excitement Kennedy did. But in his first weeks, he so dominated the press by his own intense activity and his success with Congress has hardly to need press relations. The stature this gained him with the public had its reflex on the press, which has to respect success. He has had to overcome the earlier impression the press corps had of him as an operator. The Bobby Baker case hasn't helped. His future both with President public hinges a good deal on whether the Baker case touches him more closely. One would guess the public impression of the President will depend less on personal press relations than on his public activity. His effectiveness with Congress so far makes him less dependent on press relations. But he eventually feels less secure with the press than with the politicians.

He has held off on press conferences. The first one televised and that not live was February 1. His personality did not come through well in this performance as it had in the relaxed talk he'd had earlier with just the White House reporters. He seemed self-consciously holding himself in as if not trusting himself to say too much. Unless he can adapt himself to this quite special kind of performance, he may wisely keep press conferences to a minimum. But this is not all of press relations. He's had a good press so far regardless. And as long as he keeps making positive news, he can command press attention. I think that we should establish just what has been going on between Lyndon Johnson and the press before we get into any analysis of it. Pete, would you start out on that? Yes, sir. I think that President Johnson is doing what comes naturally for a president, especially a new president. I think he would like to make cheerleaders out of all of us. And we're fighting hard to preserve our virtue. Because soon enough, I think, as you suggested earlier, soon enough, we'll all turn into our natural state, which is to be common skulls and he'll have to deal with us then.

But I think we're in that period of a new president's tenure when we tend to exaggerate his virtues and overlook what vices and defects and warts there might be. But I think we're coming to the end of that period and we'll all go back again as I say to our role as adversaries because I think there's a basic conflict between the president and the press. It's one that we tend to smudge over a bit, but I think it exists. And I think all presidents learned it in good time as president Kennedy did. I think President Eisenhower had less desire to deal with the press and I think they all get swallowed up by the job after a time. They get it's an all-embracing job and the press then reverts to its natural function. And I think that the very fact that President Johnson has such a reputation as a master at this art, I think it tends to put reporters on the defensive and to make them look for the gimmicks. To make them wonder when he calls for 50 women in government within 30 days whether this is good government or just good public relations.

When he talks about a Negro ambassador at large to Africa whether this is good diplomacy or just good public relations. And I think these kind of gimmicks alert good reporters and make them wonder whether they've been taken in. Well, I think the president is making a difficult transition from legislative leader to president. As legislative leader, like things close to his chest to reveal his aims and objectives was to give his opponents a chance to thwart them, tended to keep the press at arm's length. And the presidency, he's got to make his aims and objectives known to the public and gain their support to get programs through Congress. So he's made himself very accessible to the press. Perhaps too accessible. We all know the saying familiarity breeds contempt and we're a naturally contemptuous lot as Pete just said. Therefore, the honeymoon period when we were willing to all give him the benefit of the doubt is pretty much over.

We're looking for flaws and we'll find them there flaws in anybody. The press has in recent years become a kind of public institution. Those paper men have become public figures all too often. And they're no longer private figures who are doing a job and who do it in an anonymous way. Everybody now has to have a piece of the action. They have to be a piece of the television camera during the President Kennedy's time. We were all spirit carriers in a great big weekly press conference. And as I've often said, you stand up in that press conference and it's like standing up in the United Nations General Assembly. And you throw a question across the hall and if he catches it while you're lucky, but he never addresses himself back to you. He addresses himself to the camera and to the millions of Americans who may be listening. But we have become so public everybody has an identity scrambling and fighting and gouging for this identity that we sometimes forget what our role is.

And I think our role is properly to be the auditor after a fashion. I don't want to pretend that we're God because we're not. We have fallible judgments just as anyone else does. But I think we ought to be auditing the presidency and all of his actions and stop worrying too much about our personal relations with a president or our personal position even in this town of Washington generally. I think the press is partly to blame for the for President Johnson's great preoccupation with it. He he's preoccupied with it because it's become a formidable institution in its own right and people are formidable individuals are formidable. And he is wooing the press now after a time I would predict contrary to what Phil may say that he will be less accessible. In fact he may be inaccessible except that set peace press conferences if he ever has those because now he's showing great resistance to that kind of press conference.

He would prefer to have a few friends in and sit down and chat about the days or the week's affairs and events and not to entertain any tough questions. And I agree with Phil that he's very sensitive to the press to the extent perhaps that he doesn't want to put himself in a position where he will have to he will have to entertain tough questions because there's some mean characters in town responsible citizens but they're they're going to provoke and to evoke the right kind of answers from the president. Well I think that Phil brought up an interesting point which is that perhaps that we'll find that brought them in too close because I think you there is a danger that bringing in large quantities of reporters putting them on a very familiar basis. I think so. Bring them into your ranch house in Texas and you're living quarters in Washington and having a great access. I think you run the risk of sort of downplaying the whole role of the president.

I think a lot of the dignity. I think giving the reporters themselves a sense that perhaps they are being taken and perhaps they're falling for the old social game. I think we're pretty much agreed that he's going to find as most presidents have the distance lens a little enchantment. I think we're. It was a very amusing column by our book quality of the day picturing a White House correspondent hiding in a locker in the YMCA. He didn't want any more news. He was being pursued he felt. I think the reporter generally began to resent the kind of treatment which implies at least that you you must be friendly and often favorable to everything the president does. It's awfully hard for a man who's been entertained in the White House to go out and write a story about the president as an idiot or a bomb or what have you. You tend to soften the edges of criticism and I think criticism is an essential part of our function. You tend to obscure or minimize things that the public generally ought to be hearing about ought to know about.

This is a great danger of the kind of relationship that a president has with newspaper people, the danger from the newspaper man's side. And then to protect himself and newspaper man will often be critical just to show that he's maintained his independence. And this sometimes is unfair criticism. You think some of that might be happening now? Well, I don't think so big. I think it comes a point when the reporter just wants to prove that he's a free and unchangeable. I think we're entering that period. I think the circumstances under which the president came to the office disposed us to give him the benefit of the doubt and I think quite rightly. And I think he performed very well and we approved to that. But we're going to come as Pete said earlier to party in the ways. We have our function and he has his and there's bound to be conflict between us. This time goes on.

And the great dangers that everybody will then will begin to believe that the whole thing is public relations. And the substance isn't there that the real effort to run the government. I think there is some danger of that. Yes. That seems to me the great pitfall lies ahead of President Johnson on the present basis of operation. Well, you wrote in a recent column, Charlie, that you thought there was some danger of hurting government employees morale because of this. Well, I'd be getting to feel some of the people within the government feel that the president is putting an excessive amount of his time and attention upon the outside looked at his actions. Too little upon what actually is going into them and too little in the very substance of the decision that he's making in terms of personnel. But Charlie hasn't had been true really of most recent presidents. Don't they all want to put the best facade on their administration, especially in these early days when the image is all important? They want to put an imprint on their administration that's friendly and favorable, as I say. Absolutely.

And then much of their actions, much of their energies are devoted to public image and too little of it, I think, is devoted to the substance of affairs. So, but it's a question of the green summary specs here. It seems to me you're both overlooking some real achievements that he's had. For instance, we've got the tax bill through today. It's a real achievement. He got the foreign aid bill and he got the appropriations bills through and a quite rough last December. It is a lot of substance to what he's achieved. He's got to be judged on that substance rather than on some image-making affair. I think that that's where he will stand or fall on what he does. And I think our role is to evaluate that, to judge it, to praise it, and not to be blinded by his accessibility, his friendliness to us. He says, having us down on the ranch into his house, putting his arm around our shoulders, having pictures taken and all this.

And I'm afraid that this is a great psychological undertow at work after a thing like this. And it's difficult to divorce yourself, to step back, detach yourself from the man in his works. And I'm particularly speaking of his works rather than the man. It's awfully hard to do that in a very detached way, I think, as you would agree. Well, I do agree. I think he's feeling his way. He's got to find his own style and his own way of doing things in a new office. Truman displayed a great deal of uncertainty and when he first succeeded to the office after Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Johnson succeeding after a president who made a great impact on the country and on the press, particularly on the press. Mr. Johnson's going to have to feel his way.

And I would judge that some of the uncertainties that perhaps we see now will disappear if he elected in his own right as they did disappear in the case of Mr. Truman. What about this firing of the U.S.A. photographer the other day? Isn't that sort of a sign of this insecurity in this area? I think so, this uncertainty that I spoke of and I think it goes back to also to his great sensitivity. One of the hardest things for me to imagine, however, fell is Lyndon Johnson being uncertain about anything. And I think what you mean here, rather, is he's trying to find an effective way to deal with and handle the press, rather than being uncertain about any moves or action he might be taking. It seems to me he's the least uncertain man to fall into the presidency under rather sudden abrupt circumstances that day we could one could imagine because if a man seemed to be born to the power of the office and dealing with the press, it seems to me that the president Johnson is that man. I thought he was very sure of himself in the legislative field, he's a legislative animal.

I have a feeling that he's not as sure of himself in the new job that he will because he learns. And I think perhaps he gets to mandate in his own right if he's elected that we'll see a man who's much easier in his relationship. He won't seem to be striving so hard. Louis Lyons mentioned the Bobby Baker case and someone has suggested that if he really does get on the outs with the press, that press might sort of take reprisal by emphasizing his connection with that case. Do you think that's a possibility? I don't think the press takes reprisals at it. It just seems to me that the feelings build up a sense of situation builds up. I think there are periods of criticism, periods of approbation for any president. I don't think the reprisals do. No. There is a suggestion about vindictiveness in the press, being out of sorts with anyone, including a president. But I don't think a reporter sits down at his typewriter because he doesn't like a president or a senator personally and takes it out on him.

I think he attempts to do an objective job to the degree that one can be objective and tries to step back in a detached way and report things as he thinks they are. I really think there's a great deal more integrity in the press and many people might agree with you. I suggest, and as a matter of fact, I think it's probably as much integrity in the press as a profession, as there isn't any single other one I can think of. I think that's true. I think our spleen is usually vented in bowl sessions or up at the press club bar and when we sit down with the typewriters. Well, let me be more personal about it. Phil Potter is, I think, one of the most controversial and argumentative and disputatious guys to sit down with and have a bowl session. We've all been in the light and wonderful. I never will agree with anything you might say or any politician might say. But I read his copy and it's one of the most objective accounts you can read about. People you know that he has contempt for, other people who have great admiration for,

and it's never reflected really in his stories. I think that's true across the board almost. I think the problem in front of the president is much more of the danger that the press will become convinced that the public is being treated with gimmicks or that in some way being taken in. At that point, I think there might be a revolt on the point of the press where there will be a suited effort to see what really is being done. But even there, you can document that story thing, Charlie. I think you can always document the gimmicks in time. They expose, they tend to expose themselves. Yeah, some of those are clear already. What about this matter of calling up editors and complaining about stories? I mean, that never really endures office holder to a reporter. You know, I got some weakness on the part I think it's been done before by previous presidents, I think President Kennedy. Any president who's sensitive to criticism tends to react this way. They learn eventually that it's not worth doing and they stop doing it. But I think there's a fairly natural and modern president.

Thank you, Peter Lysagore, Charlie Bartlett, Phil Potter. What I think we have is a situation that could have serious consequences for President Johnson. We have a press corps accustomed to the disciplined intellectual approach of President Kennedy. We have a new president concerned about his public image who is trying hard, perhaps too hard, to make news. He has made himself more accessible than any other modern president. He has introduced a coffee conference, a Saturday conference, the sudden appearance on the hill or its social gatherings, the six-hour monologue at the ranch, and skinny dipping in the White House pool. As majority leader of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson was quite affected with reporters, with whom he had long and formal chats. He still tries to see reporters individually, and set on his January 25th press conference, he had granted 30 or 40 separate interviews. He also said, I never joy anything more than polite, fair, courteous, fair, judicious reporters, and I think all of you qualify. But at the same time, he complained about news leaks and admonished the New York Times not to write editorials about presidential decisions before he makes them.

Every president has been irritated by what the press says about him, but Mr. Johnson has seen more sensitive than most. He and his aides of called reporters, editors, and publishers to object to stories, or even a few lines in a story. The press and the president are natural adversaries, and this basic enmity is beginning to assert itself. The reaction which is set in is largely personal. Some of it stems from the change in style, New England to Texas. Some complaints stem simply from the change in working conditions, the longer hours, Saturdays, crowded conference rooms, and the like. It may be too early to tell whether President Johnson's relations with the press will damage his effectiveness as president. The current criticism may be just a swing of the pendulum, from the initial burst of enthusiasm to a temporary period of disenchantment. Developments will be interesting to watch. This is NET, National Educational Television.

Thank you.