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Show Press may lose when it wins t f By Jack Anderson Syndicated Columnist : : :-, Sixty years ago, a sick person who : went to.the hospital took a fifty-fifty z V.z chance that its ministrations would do mor harm than good. Yet doc-tors doc-tors were highly esteemed in public opinion. Today, when his brand of medicine is vastly improved, the s:; medic's standing in the polls has plunged dramatically. :Vzi An even lower standing afflicts z:ll- the nation's press today, even ir": i: though, it, too, is doing a far better I:: ; job than yesteryear. In current :;E:;. polls, newspaper people are rated near the bottom of the occupational list, down among labor leaders, con-gressmen con-gressmen and used car salesmen. zbl- The doctor's fall off can probably be : attributed to the unconscionable l-'.-l money grubbing and interminable z golf playing and resort hopping of a visible segment of that profession. ;:rr; Unfortunately, no such sybaritic J :.; explanation accounts for the press's ill repute. It is in disfavor precisely because it is doing its job better than ever before, which is to say, it is digging dig-ging for news more abrasively and pursuing frauds more relentlessly than ever before. Much is said of press errors. However, it is not the errors of investigation in-vestigation but the investigation itself, and the commotion and human carnage it causes that stimulates the current popular hostility. In the main, the press charges against Nixon and Agnew, Wayne Hayes and Bert Lance, the Watergate aides and the bribetaking bribe-taking congressmen, have stood up. It is the diligence of the press in constantly con-stantly looking for something wrong, not its carelessness, that is resented by large numbers. This means that large numbers object to the true mission of the press. It was not granted constitutional constitu-tional immunities and protection so it could go inic ue pap dispensing business of d g public relations work for celebk.des but rather so it could hold their actions and poses up to a merciless light. In former periods, we have had a pap dispensing dispens-ing press and before we sink back into it by popular demand, let's take . a look at what this entails. It is often complained that celebrities presidents for instance are watched too closely, that the press has no respect for their privacy and that their most trivial quirks and personal ailments are callously blared out to the public. But it is the opposite press attitude- over-respect for a public person's privacy that has caused the worst press derelictions. In the autumn of 1944, there was. enough circumstantial evidence of President Roosevelt's medical unfitness un-fitness for a fourth term that the press should have battered through the White House defenses, printed all it knew of the President's decrepitude, and spearheaded a demand de-mand for honest information from outside experts. Perhaps the voters, given the facts, would have preferred a failing Roosevelt to a robust Dewey. But an over-polite press let them make the choice in the dark. A similar failure of press in-trusiveness in-trusiveness occurred during President Presi-dent Eisenhower's two major illnesses ill-nesses late in his first term: the massive heart attack and the ileitis operation. A docile press cooperated with White House publicists in selling sell-ing the false impression that Ike was really in charge of the major problems when in fact some reporters where bringing to their editors evidence that for a considerable con-siderable period Ike was unaware of vital world events and unable to cope even minimally with his vast responsibilities, evidence that went mostly Unpublished. The press is in disfavor, too, for supposedly being too quick to create scandals, for blowing up petty events and intimidating the government govern-ment into launching damaging probes of office holders. Having lived liv-ed through the 1950s and 1960s, when it was necessary to build a bonfire under most of the press to get it moving on a real scandal, I contend that a fire-eating press is far better for the Republic than the reluctant dragon of yesteryear. I cite three instances involving the New York Times, not because it represents the worst in newspapers but the best, and its influential news policy, therefore, has great significance. The first is oft-cited case that the Times had foreknowledge of President Presi-dent Kennedy's half-cocked Bay. of Pigs operation but, out of deference to the government, kept it quiet a service Kennedy later lamented. In 1957-58, Drew Pearson and I published many stories about widespread favor-taking and case-fixing case-fixing in the federal regulatory commissions. com-missions. This trail, in the end, led to Eisenhower's- White House chief of staff, Sherman Adams, and forced forc-ed his ouster. This scandal almost died out two or three times because the general press would not take it up. There was an attitude at large in the press, typified by the Times, that before a paper accused an official of-ficial there should be an official accusation, ac-cusation, or at least an accusation by an official. Unfortunately, government agencies had a complementary com-plementary policy: don't accuse anyone unless forced to do so by press disclosure. Finally, we published excerpts from a memorandum prepared by the chief counsel of a House subcommittee proposing an. investigation of general types of misconduct by unnamed un-named persons. This memorandum was kind of thin beer since we had already been naming the offenders and specifying their acts. But the existence of an official concern legitimatized this story for the Times, which published the memo in a front page account that set off an avalanche of press coverage and official of-ficial reaction. Almost a decade later, our expose of Senator Tom Dodd was dying on the vine because other news outfits wouldn't pick it up. Two fine Times reporters submitted several excellent ex-cellent stories on Dodd but they were pigeonholed by editors because there had not been any official of-ficial accusation against Dodd. "We report news, we do not create news," they said. Fortunately, the Times scrapped this policy when it wrongly believed the Washington Post was about to jump in on the Dodd story. With the press finally in full pursuit of this inordinately documented scandal, the Senate censured Dodd and adopted its first code of ethics in two centuries. When the best of newspapers was displaying such investigative caution, cau-tion, one dreads to recall what the mediocre were doing. Do we really want to go back to the days of an inoffensive in-offensive press that was reluctant to roil the public or affront the powerful power-ful by breaking the unpleasant news about sick presidents, corrupt commissioners com-missioners and bribe-taking congressmen? |