On the Media; 1994-05-08; Part 2; Getting It Wrong; Nixon and the Press

Coverage. There was a lot of reluctant gnashing of teeth over the coverage of Nixon. But but I think on the whole, it was no better, no worse. What you had, as your caller pointed out, was a political figure who was extraordinarily paranoid, who was more than more than routinely sensitive about his coverage, and of course, reacted with constitutional abuses were quite unprecedented in the in the history of the republic. You saw today, when you look back on your coverage of Richard Nixon during the time he was in office. What do you regret? Well, I can't say that I really regret anything. I thought we were fairly evenhanded. I do agree that that first term got pretty commended story coverage. We played along pretty well with Nixon. We didn't get to see that much when we did. It was a pretty straightforward account of him. I. The problems came, of course, in the break in in 1972. I don't. I didn't in those early days.

I can't remember today that there was anything that was really that bad or should have alerted us to evil currents below. My distinguished colleagues on his show raised a couple of points, though, the one that Nixon set the agenda. Well, of course he did. He was president, the United States, and that we contemporary historians or instant historians of the old Eddie Failure of The Washington Post choose de Gaulle. That's what we do. And I think that both these gentlemen who have written books and have the longer view perhaps want us to do that, too. And I'm not sure that's the business I'm in. I'm I'm not. Yes. Let me ask Doug. Helen, are you more critical of Hugh Sidey than he is of his own coverage? I am, rather. Yes. I think he's just given us the reason why the when when a president bombs a country which we're not at war with. And that fact actually is leaks out in a very small

way. Roger Morris knows a great deal more about this than I, but in a very small way in a couple of news reports. And then the Red Sea closes around those reports as if they had never happened. And the press does not pursue this. And I'm here speaking of the so-called secret bombing of Cambodia, which was, of course, not secret from Cambodian peasants. This, I think, is a dereliction of duty. It's the obligation of the press not to let the president carry on a private war without exposing it. You saw it out there. Let me just answer that a bit. Sure. If I may, because here Nixon inherits a war with half a million people as far away as you can get them. And I think genuinely wants to wind it down. And now we argue about the method. Wahaha is a nasty business. I don't know that there's any tidy way to do it. And I think Richard Nixon probably had this strange idea. You could apply more force and it would win.

And this was judged to be a crime. And, yes, these things were done that were very unpleasant. But as far as I know, the effort was to get us out. My role in that was to try to report as much as I could. As a matter of fact, I can remember one of the stories that created a bit of a Russell Air, kind of an interesting story in which he had watched the movie Patton twice up at Camp David before he ordered the Cambodian bombing at this strange man. It's kind of isolated himself and inspired by the image of George Patton. We tried, I think, as hard as we could to find out what went on inside. It's not always easy. Well, we can't go back to libraries and get the archives. We can't interview the people. It happens for the moment. But first of all, historical matters. Nixon watched Patton before him while he was in the process of revving himself up for the invasion of Cambodia, the ground invasion. And in the in April, May nineteen seventy, I was referring to the secret bombing of Cambodia.

But you see, Mr. β of of of the Globe and the Times actually got this story about the secret bombing. Nixon, of course, was so disturbed about it that he launched into the great wave of tappings to try to plug the leak. But that information was gettable. It was gettable. Beecher got it out of the press. The rest of the press was uninterested. The other thing I would say about trying to leave the war. Eisenhower was elected to end the Korean War. In fact, I mean, that wasn't the way he put it. He said, I shall go to Korea. But he did go and he ended the war. You don't need to pursue five more years of war to end the war now. But that's a judgment. See, that's a judgment. And you're like. My two distinguished colleagues, again, is that they have a point of view, and I'm not sure that's my role. Do you think you have any real society? What I reading you at the time, I thought you had a point of view and your point of view was to give Nixon the benefit of the doubt as well. Reading me at the time. Yes.

It just didn't make it. Having helped drive him out of office, Roger Morris, if I may jump in Iowa, I was, I must say, for my sins there. I have to confess, I was in the business often of conflicting things, too. To feed to you a there spinning Lusardi is a summit. Well, I'm telling. I don't remember. Henry Kissinger dealt rather directly with Hugh Sidey, as I recall. But I don't want to single out Mr. Sidey. I think that that there was a massive seduction going on here, and it wasn't in foreign policy terms, principally Richard Nixon's. It was his national security advisers. Henry Kissinger was the was the darling of the Washington press corps. And Henry Kissinger, I know, personally killed stories about embarrassing foreign policy revelations and national security matters with The New York Times and The Washington Post by phone calls to to their executive editor as or their bureau chiefs and so on, that went on in and with some regularity. There was a continual operation out of the Old West basement of the White House, where Kissinger and his officers in those days to to make sure

that the press was telling the right story and presenting the foreign policy, especially in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, in the right light. So there was a good deal of manipulation going on. And on the whole, looking at it from the inside, it was enormously successful. I understand what you cited as saying about views and about biases. I think we we all operate with those either acknowledged or unacknowledged. But I think Todd Gitlin is absolutely right that they were gettable stories of fact, matters of fact about what the United States was doing in Southeast Asia or for that matter, elsewhere in the world in Chile and in a number of other places that the press simply didn't get. They were they were warned or seduced or cajoled off of those stories, even sometimes after they said they had stumbled upon them by Kissinger and by Nixon in the mystique of national security, which that administration, after all, use not only publicly but privately to justify its abuses of constitutional authority. And power was very, very powerful in those days. And I think it unfortunately, it still haunts much of Washington coverage.

You're still paying some of that price in the coverage of Bill Clinton. This is a bipartisan disaster in an American political culture, not not a function of Richard Nixon. So that we're talking about some some very fundamental issues here. Let me get one of our listeners on to talk about this. Erica in Westchester either. Yes. Guess this is an extremely interesting program. I really list in the obituary some of the examination of the corruption, corruptive corruption that Nixon had on the American consciousness and sense of trust that they expect to put in their politicians. Now, he didn't have. Some of this from Lyndon Johnson, who campaigned and was elected on the basis that he would end the war in Vietnam. But he carried it so much further with so many elaboration that what we now inherited is that when you think of the crime, as well as the themes of his presidency, people

now say, well, they are doing. And consequently, no one is held to any standard. And the press is packed for lack of standards in examining these politicians. Erica, speaking from a car phone, if you thought that was a bad connection. Todd Gitlin, respond to Erica, if you would, and talk if you if you would, about the way you see the Nixon presidency and the legacy of that is reflecting itself in the in the Clinton administration in the way presidents are treated now. Well, it's as if the press is now playing catch up. And I think that the various gates that we've been saddled with or the rather petty attempts of the press to restore its sense of itself as vigilant, some of what they come up with is interesting and some of it is not.

Many of these things depend on your point of view. But I think that the press likes to prove that it's the boss, that it's the power that has to be reckoned with, a force, the state, the the collective watchdog. And there's a certain sense in which in which he if you are a majestic figure and in particular, I think a Republican, you can use the fact that the press dislikes you against them. That's a. Paradox. Let me explain it. You can get the press to bend over backward in reverence or at least respect when you know they disagree with you. Whereas the Democrats who've been elected in the last 25 years, there've been very few of them for the reason Roger Morris said before Nixon's successful realignment of the South. The Democrats come to office as outsiders. The press may may respect them at first, but they or moralists, they don't go out of their way to be especially nice to the press.

They don't know how to do that, or they think they can govern without it. And they leave themselves open to petty scandal. Hugh Sidey, do you feel in alien company when you think of the people who are in the way the press is covering the presidency these days from the time that when in the 70s or rather the 50s and 60s, when you when you began? Oh, yes, indeed. I think much has just been said. Is that correct? And I think it goes deeper than that. This has become a giant soap opera. I think that's the most insidious thing, this infusion of Hollywood in Washington, the whole show business routine. I think we see it with Mr. Clinton now. His answer to problems in foreign policy is to go on to another television talk show. And it's not unimportant, but it's not at the center of the problems. And and we are all kind of wrapped up in this and the pursuit of a fact. Well, it goes on. But honestly, I have to say, on some days the idea of the evening drama is far more important than

than gathering the facts. And those of us that deplore it and would stay out of it nevertheless, I guess for competitive reasons, market reasons or whatever seem drawn into it. And I think it's a distortion. I think you've made an interesting point. This has been a very interesting discussion. I want to thank you, Saudi Roger Morris and Todd Gitlin for participating in this discussion of Nixon in the press. The producer for On the media is Judith Hepburn Blank with assistant producer Lauren Komeito and production help from Erica Herman. Our audio engineer is Christine BRAWNER on the Media is a production of WNYC New York Public Radio in association with the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. Executive producer Larry Awfully. I'm Alex Jones. This is the.