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NIEMAN REPORTS

VoL. xxxix, No. 4, WINTER 1985

ToM WINSHIP pays homage to W. E. B. DuBois Retired Globe editor calls for more activism in newsrooms.

HowARD SIMONS shows how South Africa today represents a mirror to Americans.

ELLEN MICKIEWICZ describes the proliferation of television sets in the USSR. Americans and Soviets are two different audiences.

WIL HAYGOOD meets with the stuff of legend. Homer Bigart only wanted a deadline to beat.

JAcK FoiSIE asks if correspondents should be subject to time limits in their foreign posts.

WILLIAM GoRDON reflects on the Calvinist history of Holland and its influence on the Dutch press today. ------FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESK------

'Who Is Crucifying South Africa'

Howard Simons

Howard Simons, curator of the Nie­ ing seen in September 1960 were stories search for its solution; out of their in­ man Foundation and Nieman Fellow about the East-West struggle, the strug­ ability to find a humane solution came '59, gave the following address to the gle for the presidency and, above all, the the Civil War; this mingling of white South African Nieman Fellows at a struggle for civil rights in the United and Negro remains today, along with November gathering in Johannesburg. States, which prided itself on being a peace-and-war and the proper conduct The occasion marked the twenty-fifth democratic beacon to a darkly, darkly of the economy, one of the three cardi­ anniversary of South African journal­ world. nal properties of American life!' ists' participation in the Nieman pro­ It was a time of enormous change in Teddy went on: gram under the sponsorship of the the United States - in our view of our­ "It is not so much color that divides United States - South Africa Leader selves and in our view of the world. Negro and white Americans as the way Exchange Program (USSALEP). This was especially true for race rela­ the past has created different conditions tions. Just six months before Aubrey of life and thus different social habits and Lewis arrived, four youngsters re­ and mores." am honored to be here. There is lit­ fused to leave a lunch counter at a He said, too, in 1960, that "What has tle that is more pleasing to me than Woolworth variety store in Greensboro, happened in the past decade is that I to be surrounded by journalists, North Carolina, after being refused ser­ Negro Americans insist on discussing and most especially to be in the compa­ vice because they were black. By the their own fate with white Ameri­ ny of Nieman Fellows. time Sebastian Kleu arrived for his Nie­ cans .. .." Twenty-five years is a long time. It is man Fellowship the next September, There are two things to be said about almost half my lifetime. It is more than more than seventy thousand students, Teddy White's observations of twenty­ half the lifetime of the Nieman pro­ whites and blacks, had staged similar five years ago. The first is that white­ gram itself. Much has happened over sit-ins to break the back of lunch black relations, guns, and butter still these past twenty-five years. And much counter discrimination in my country. are the three most important issues has not. It was a time of profound and irre­ that gnaw and sometimes rub raw the When Aubrey Sussens and Lewis versible change, best captured and best bone of the American spine. The sec­ Nkosi arrived in' the United States in chronicled by Theodore White in his ond observation that I would make is the late summer of 1960, Dwight David seminal book: The Making of the Presi­ that for South Africans, particularly Eisenhower still was President. John F. dent, 1960. white South Africans, not to hear an Kennedy and Richard M . Nixon were "The mingling of white and Negro echo in Teddy White's words is to be carooming around the nation soliciting Americans;' Teddy said, "has been the not as blind as a bat but worse - deaf. votes. Man had not yet soared into most terrible problem of American pol­ I am not so naive as to think that the space to "touch the face of God." Viet­ itics since the Constitution makers situations in the United States and nam, a distant country, was a distant first became embrangled in a hopeless South Africa are identical. Of course Cold War challenge, if at all. The boor­ they are not. I am not so insensitive as ish, shoe-thumping Nikita Khrushchev to suggest that the United States has announced that he would visit the solved its racial challenge or created a United Nations in New York City. The perfect society of equality for all its citi­ summer Olympic games in Rome dom­ zens or dug deep enough into its own inated the sports pages. Desegregation psyche and purged itself of racism. Of stories were a regular feature of Ameri­ course it has not. And I am not so can newspapers and newscasts. The dumb as to think that the inculcations Congo, where United Nations troops of three centuries can be uprooted and were trying to maintain order, domina­ made to disappear just like that. Of ted the front page. And news about course they cannot. South Africa was almost nowhere to be But, and it is a significant but, there read, let alone seen. What was being read, what was be- continued on page 22

2 Nieman Reports NIEMAN CONTENTS 2 1Who Is Crucifying South Africa' Howard Simons REPORTS Crisis mentality calls for crisis response. 4 Disciplined Intelligence: An Effective Weapon for Social Justice Thomas Winship Vol. XXXIX, No. 4 How newspapers can become a vital forc e in everyday life. Winter 1985 7 Soviet and American Television: A Comparison of News Coverage Ellen Mickiewicz A crash program in the USSR to produce television sets has brought Publisher them into 90 percent of Soviet homes. HOWARD SIMONS 12 Homer Bigart Wil Haygood Editor A visit with one of the greatest war correspondents of all time. TENNEY BARBARA K. LEHMAN 15 A New Broom or an Old Hand Jack Foisie Consulting Editor Does freshness or experience mal

book (book), n. 1. a written or printed work of some length, as a treatise, novel, or other literary composition, esp. on consecutive sheets of paper fa stened or bound together in a volume. 2. a Nieman Reports (USPS #340-650) is published number of sheets of blank or ruled paper quarterly by the Nieman Foundation for journal­ bound together for writing, recording ism at Harvard University, One Francis Avenue, commercial transactions, etc. 3. a divi­ Cambridge, MA 02138. Copyright ©1985 by the sion of a literary work, esp. one of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. larger divisions. Subscription $15.00 a year; add $10.00 for for­ eign air mail. Single copies $4.00. Back copies are available from the Nieman Office. Please address all subscription correspondence and change of address information to P. 0. Box The next issue of Nieman Reports will be 4951, Manchester, NH 03108. devoted entirely to books and will feature essay-type reviews. Among the authors Second-class postage paid at Boston, Massachu­ and critics will be Nieman Fellows. setts, and additional entries. PosTMASTER: Send fom1 35 79 to P. 0. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108

Winter 1985 3 Disciplined Intelligence: An Effective Weapon for Social Justice Thomas Winship

The following is excerpted from remarks made by Thomas Winship, the first WE.B. DuBois speaker, at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in August 1985.

y friends of the National Memorial during the march on Wash­ at the moment, suffering from too Association of Black Jour­ ington. I am humbled at the thought much cynicism, defeatism, and down­ M nalists, you have done me a of even attempting to say anything right selfishness. I am feeling rather great honor, and I thank you. I am espe­ under the DuBois banner, but as I grim about the state of the press and cially pleased to be asked by you to be understand the purpose of the DuBois the state we ourselves are in these days. your first W.E .B. DuBois speaker. talk, I am expected to discuss some The time has come again for a new Dr. DuBois - what a towering fig­ overriding current issue in our craft. generation of social concern and acti­ ure in American history he was! He de­ Dr. DuBois has given me my issue. vism in journalism. It is my fervent voted his life to redefining the role of In the forward of a report entitled "A hope that black reporters and editors black people at home and abroad. His Policy Framework for Social Justice" by will be in the vanguard. intellectual leadership came from Kenneth Clark and John Hope Franklin, I hasten to add, I do not mean the many platforms, those of teacher, soci­ the authors noted that even in the early kind of activism practiced in many ologist, poet, editor, and writer. He died 1940's, W.E.B. DuBois was saying that newspapers in the 1960's, when news­ in Accra, Ghana, where he moved, as the most difficult stage in the struggle room bleeding hearts were riding so he put it, to "pass the evening of his for racial justice in America would be high that a page-one news story and an life," at age 95. The date: August 28, reached when it became clear that editorial often were indistinguishable. 1963, the very same day Martin Luther basic inequities persisted in spite of liti­ I am talking about more activism in King, Jr. delivered his "I have a dream" gation, legislation, and confrontation. the editing assignment process. I am speech on the steps of the Lincoln The success or failure of the civil rights rooting for covering more stories of struggle, he said, would ultimately be more social importance. I am rooting determined by the ability of highly for more urgent and constant attention trained groups of black professionals to to our people in deep trouble, and for Thomas Winship, use their disciplined intelligence as less superficial, show-biz reporting. recently retired as effective weapons in the battle for We in the news business are becom­ editor of The Bos­ social justice. ing too damned comfortable. We sim­ ton Globe, is an More specifically, I want to share ply are not stretching ourselves. Inaugural Fellow with you some thoughts on how news­ It would be one thing, if the reality at the Gannett papers can become a more vital force of the news in our country and world Center for Media in our everyday life; how they can make justified our self-satisfaction and indul­ Studies at Colum­ a greater difference; how newspapers gence: there have been such periods in bia University He and you can help to nudge our nation our lives, and we should recognize that. is organizing a new training center out of the self-centered stupor into The fact is that today our nation and in Reston, Virginia, for mid-career which television and government pol­ our profession do not give us grounds journalists, primarily from develop­ icy have driven it. We, as a nation, and to reach around and pat ourselves affec­ ing countries. as the press, are in big psychic trouble tionately. This is not a time to pat

4 N ieman Reports Photo: Courtesy of The Boston G lobe The press is missing the biggest domestic time-bomb story of the decade . ...

backs, it is a time to kick rears. cused on what is truly important, but they are newspapers. They just about For fifteen years, between John F. also more than a bit dull. shut down their newsrooms after Kennedy's election through Richard I shall take a moment on this mat­ watching the 6 P.M. local television Nixon's resignation and the fall of Sai­ ter of dullness, because it relates so shows. And local television stations are gon, we faced a series of stark choices directly to the effectiveness and the cir­ content merely to update their 6 P.M. re­ from which it was impossible to shrink culation of the press. Certainly, news­ port for their 11 o'clock news. and which gave off few grays. Overt papers have improved immeasurably in Networks are down for the night and racial discrimination was wrong or the last twenty years - in scope, in morning television shows have a rela­ right. The prosecution of a full-scale new areas of coverage and expertise, in tively small audience. So newspapers war in Indochina was either immoral fairness, in photography, and in make­ ought to beef up their night staffs, in­ or a noble cause. Nixon was perceived up. cluding a ranking editor or two, re-staff as being hounded by lefty kids or as a But in their march toward more re­ police headquarters, cover late meet­ crook. Women should be given either spectability, newspapers became a bit ings, big and little crime, and sports equal status in society or kept out of too cerebral. Though I consider myself extensively. Newspapers can and should the workplace. Our air and water were the world's greatest fan of newspapers, own the news between 7 P.M. and 3 either being poisoned or not. I must say I find many papers today A.M., and, to compete with television, Throughout this heady 1960's and cold, remote, and boring. They have editors and reporters should be urged to 1970's period of revolutions, one after lost some of the spunk, the warmth, write "second day" stories with a for­ another, the pressure on newspaper edi­ the sparkle, and some of the funkiness ward spin. This was how evening news­ tors was tremendous. A new generation that in the first place made them vital papers were written before the days of of reporters and editors assaulted me institutions. television and traffic-clogged cities. constantly, agitating endlessly to write I wish editors wouldn't let their dig­ Why are newspapers so timid about stories that couldn't have been done nity show quite so much. In becoming giving readers the small items they can­ before, and in a style previously un­ more professional, too many editors not get on the tube? We should not be thinkable. In the midst of Boston's soul­ have lost the nerve to follow their own so bashful about offering recipes, advice wrenching confrontation with itself, creative instincts. I suspect you could columns, comics, and mini-movie re­ black journalists carne to me more than publish the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in views. once, with all barrels blazing. I loved Phoenix, The Chicago Tribune in Phil­ There is another underlying reason the reporter-demands, welcomed them, adelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer in why newspapers are so homogenized, even their excesses. Chicago, and it would be days before and so out of touch with their com­ On the occasions when people were customers noticed. (There is no signifi­ munity: It's the bright, young college way out of line, it was relatively easy cance whatsoever to the examples I graduates who populate newsrooms to get them back into place. For work­ have chosen here.) today. They are an ambitious lot. They ing on the sidelines to keep a tidal wave As metropolitan editors, we have be­ want to work in the big cities, but cover of intellectual and political ferment in come so peer conscious, we are afraid only big-time state, national, and for­ check and channeled into productive to retain our old-time identity and idio­ eign news. It is this over-infatuation and creditable reportage is not - if you syncracies. Readers love weather ears, with "glamour" news, spoon-fed tore­ think about it - a frustration. puns and all. They love, I know, The porters who know this will put them What is hard is when there is no fer­ Boston Globe's "Confidential Chat" ex­ on Page One or on the evening news, ment, no electricity, no anger, no pres­ change column where real live people that bothers me so much. sure in the newsrooms, which, I fear, write to each other in the paper, over Moreover, too many reporters are is the case today. The fact is that the their noms de plume. I think readers highly nomadic and consequently don't passionate memos are not piling up in like those colorfully named editions know their own adopted cities. They the editor's box. (Night Owl, Early Bird, or Red Streak), don't live in the neighborhoods, except Groups of young reporters are not and even sports sections printed in for the gentrified ones, or care about lining up to pester the boss, and if the green. Too often, now, they are written their community's future. I wish young truth be known, our newspapers are in off as old-fashioned or corny. reporters and editors were not quite danger not only of becoming less fo- Morning newspapers have forgotten such rolling stones. By jumping too

Winter 1985 5 We simply are not examining with adequate vigor the broad, rising problems of the poor, much less exploring avenues of possible solutions.

often for a better buck they are short­ seventeen years ago still rings true, the statistics stage. We simply are not changing their own development, to say with its famous description of two soci­ examining with adequate vigor the nothing of putting too much emotional eties, one black, one white, separate broad rising problems of the poor, strain on themselves, their families, and unequal. much less exploring avenues of possi­ and their communities. The depressing fact is that real pov­ ble solutions. Take a ruler sometime Meanwhile, the press is missing the erty in the United States has been in­ and measure the space your newspaper biggest domestic time-bomb story of creasing at the same time as prosperity has given to hornelessness over the year the decade. You know what it is. It is is increasing for the upper half of soci­ and compare it to what it gave to the the worsening plight of the underclass ety. plight of the more broadly defined poor. - black, Hispanic, and white - in our The crisis in affordable housing is Think again of the incredible large cities. None of us has grasped the worse than ever, the provision of medi­ amount of television time and space full dimensions of this crisis. This bot­ cal care for those without insurance is given to the hostage crisis at the ex­ torn stratum of society is worse off a national disgrace, the leadership of pense of the non -coverage of segrnen ts today than it was in the wake of the our public and private institutions is of people out of work, the rise of civil rights movement and all the affir­ damn near as lily-white and male as it tuberculosis among the poor, and mative action programs, which allowed was after the first show of concern people eating out of trash cans, which only the present middle-class minori­ twenty years ago. We may have lost the one sees every day in New York City. ties to walk through the doors to a better part of a generation of young The fact is, we're going much more for better life. blacks and Hispanics to the twin the obvious human interest story - the The growth of the starvation-level scourges of inadequate education and tear-jerker - and not digging deeper for urban underclass here and in a score of minimal job opportunities, as the scene tougher, more systemic stories. Third World countries is not an easy has shifted from confrontation on the The same thing is happening inter­ story to cover. Its roots go down deep, streets to passive poverty in the parks nationally. Look at the space we gave twisting and penetrating into seats of and in the projects. to the magnificent outpouring of sup­ power and greed everywhere. Eleanor Holmes Norton marshalled port by the rock music world for starva­ Meanwhile, the preponderance of the facts in unrelenting detail recently tion in Africa. Then measure the num­ impact stories in the press, especially in a New York Times Magazine piece. ber of column inches the press has on television, concerns the life and Fact: Seventy percent of black chil­ given to the causes of starvation - times of the well-to-do folks. And the dren under the age of 18 who live in starting with the frightening march of most popular shows are about the white female-headed households are being the deserts and possible long-range super-rich. For example, Dallas and brought up in poverty. solutions. These stories are corning in Dynasty. Fact: The average black child can ex­ far behind. And how many stories have How does this help destitute people pect to spend more than five years of you read recently that focus on interna­ deal with the world as they find it? childhood in poverty; the average white tional development aid and its short­ What does this sense of media priority child, ten months. comings? And whose fault is it that do for the unmarried 15-year-old moth­ Fact: Since 1960, the employment most of the writing on these topics, er, or the 17 -year-old boy who can't find rate of black men has dropped from 7 4 which makes its way into print, is so a job? percent to 55 percent. dry and dull it is buried inside the Consider also the two weeks of Fact: And this year, that most con­ paper? around-the-clock television coverage stant of all statistics - teenage black For the past decade, editors and pub­ and page after page of newspaper stories unemployment - still holds at 39 per­ lishers have spent most of their time about the hostages at the Beirut airport. cent, two-and-a-half times that of and resources bringing our newspapers Do we ever see that kind of commit­ whites. kicking and screaming into the late ment to the underclass story? What bothers me so very much is the twentieth century. We have shiny new Yes, the report from the Kerner Corn­ lack of sustained effort by the press to mission on Civil Disorders issued take these social crisis stories beyond continued on page 26

6 Nieman Reports Soviet and American Television: A Comparison of News Coverage

Ellen Mickiewicz

A crash program in the USSR to produce television sets has brought them into 90 percent of Soviet homes.

would like to talk to you about Sov­ iet media and in particular about I Soviet television. I have studied the media in the Soviet Union for a decade or so, much facilitated, about a year The Nieman Foundation and the Russian Re­ ago, by the acquisition at Emory Uni­ versity of equipment to receive Soviet search Center at Harvard University presented the television directly. It is the only place program "Preparation for Geneva: Orientation for in the country - Washington included - that receives domestic Soviet televi­ Journalists Who Want More Information on the sion in real-time and furthermore, to Soviet Union." Nearly one hundred newspeople my knowledge, the only one that re­ from the Boston area and out-of-state participated ceives the major Soviet national net­ work - First Program. 1n the September day and evening event. Let me begin by describing the im­ portance of television. There has been One session focused on social and economic a tremendous crash program in the pro­ developments. The following are excerpts from a visioning of television in the Soviet Union. In 1950, there was a total of transcript of the discussion by Professor Ellen 10,000 sets in the country. By 1976, Mickiewicz of Emory University, formerly dean of seven million sets were produced an­ nually and in 1985, television sets can the graduate school and currently in the depart­ be found in 90 percent of all Soviet ment of political science. households. The reasons why the rate of growth was slow for so many years Marshall Goldman, associate director of the are several: For one thing, the country Russian Research Center at Harvard University, has a very inhospitable terrain. There are eleven time zones in the Soviet and Professor of Economics, Wellesley College, or­ Union, spread over a vast and often in­ ganized the program, which was co-sponsored by accessible land mass. With the inven­ tion of modern communication satel­ the William and Mary Greve Foundation and the lites, many of these obstacles can be US. Department of State. leapfrogged, and television can finally saturate the national population. Also, I think the leadership in the

Photo: Mich igan State University Winter 1985 7 past did not fully grasp the potential thirst for international news in general, not necessarily news, and it would ap­ impact that television could have in the and for news of the West in particular. peal most to the well-educated, urban, country. In the Soviet Union, as in the This has been an unintended result of European Soviet male. United States, viewers will say that the their very own policy of stressing the I noted the fact that Soviet officials chief value of television lies in enter­ importance of the West. It may be nega­ were really quite surprised when they tainment. That's true in both systems. tive, but nonetheless it has excited that had a first look - through surveys - In the United States, television is the kind of thirst, that kind of reaction, and at their own domestic audience. They main source of news, and in the Soviet it is now causing considerable concern. were surprised by the lack of compre­ Union, as a recent survey showed, the Timeliness. As you know, whoever hension of certain commonly used majority of the population now re­ breaks the story first has the edge in terms and by the kinds of assumptions ceives most of its news about the West persuasive communication. In the past, that they had had. There is evidence - from Soviet television. Considering the timeliness never has been a value in and this precedes the appointment of short time that television has been Soviet news reporting. It was of lower Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secre­ available to the Soviet population, this priority than the educational role of tary - that the Soviet media system is is an astonishing development. Most Soviet news. It has now become a mat­ moving to deal with some of the prob­ popular, of course, are movies, sports, ter of some concern. Chernenko, in lems they have identified. For example, and light entertainment, but two-thirds June of 1983, when he was top ideology that dramatic press conference, when of the Soviet audience watch the prime­ official, talked about the West's "infor­ Marshall Ogarkov and two other offi­ time network news. mation-propaganda intervention!' There cials talked about the downing of the Even though television is much new­ is increasingly the sense in the Soviet KAL plane. Or, again, after the Soviets er in the U.S.S.R. than in the United Union that there are information walked out of Geneva. The coverage of States, television news is thought to be sources around the Soviet Union, the Politburo, which is now done week­ much more credible than written news. whether from foreign radios or inter­ ly, is an innovation. The new Foreign Why? Of course, pictures are very, very personal communication, that repre­ Ministry press conferences, led by re­ powerful, and people tend not to under­ sent a kind of threat. It follows, there­ cently appointed Vladimir Lomeiko, stand, either here or in the Soviet fore, that some kind of responsiveness give information to the foreign press. I Union, that there is an editing process and timeliness is going to have to enter think we will see more departures of behind these visual images. into the reporting of news. Soviet re­ this sort, and I think we also will see The question of feedback is a very porting of international events, in fact, an enhancement of production values interesting one. Soviet leaders thought is given much greater credibility and on Soviet television. they knew their audiences. The major authority by the Soviet audience than Let me tum now to a look at the national newspapers receive more than the Soviet reporting of domestic events. world in Soviet and American news. half a million letters a year; television Again, as in the United States, it is both This is part of a project I've been en­ and radio studios together receive more commonsensical and borne out by re­ gaged in for about a year (not all the than two million letters a year from search. There are numerous opportuni­ data have been coded or analyzed): viewers and listeners. Obviously, those ties for independent verification of an comparing ABC's World News Tonight in charge thought they must know the event that has happened near you: and the Soviet prime-time news broad­ public from the volume of that re­ You've seen it, a friend has seen it, cast. sponse. Recently a number of surveys word-of-mouth transmits it. About One of the first of the preliminary were conducted that showed they were international events there are really findings from this study is the differ­ quite wrong, that official assumptions very few resources that an average ence in centrality, the asymmetry in were unreliable. American or Soviet citizen can exploit; the coverage of each other: how much First, for example, they found that there is very little evidence other than more critically important we are for newspaper readers did not understand what the national media report. There them than they are for us. In fact, the many of the words frequently used in is the same kind of difference in credi­ United States is really the other coun­ foreign-affairs newswriting: 50 percent bility, local and national, that you see try, in terms of what the Soviet public did not know what "imperialism" in systems other than the Soviet, but sees in its news. The figures I'm going meant; 75 percent did not know what it is also true that in the Soviet Union, to present to you come from initial re­ "colonialism" meant. Another aspect of national media are more credible than sults based on a month of news broad­ the media that the officials had not are the local media. casts last fall. In that month, Soviet expected was essentially created by I will refer only briefly to the effect news devoted a total of one hour to their own policies. What has happened of Western radios. Probably about 2.0 coverage of the United States; ABC, a - and I will go into this a little bit later percent of the Soviet adult population total of four minutes to the Soviet - is that Soviet media emphasize the might listen at some point during the Union. The range of countries covered West so much, and in particular the week to Western radio. This could be totaled 30 for ABC, 53 for Vremya United States, that they have created a music, it could be some other program, (Time), the major Soviet news program.

8 Nieman Reports In this period, on ABC, 61 percent of visit coincided with very critical com­ There has been a distinct change of the stories were about the United States ments on Chancellor Kohl, whose tele­ tone on Soviet television from the time and 4 percent about the Soviet Union. gram of greeting to German irredentists that I was looking at it, say, last fall or On Vremya, 37 percent were about the was seen as a threat to the Soviet around the first of this year. It is more Soviet Union and 10 percent about the Union. hard-hitting, and more anti-American. United States. ABC broadcast a total of Sometimes sources friendly to the Let me give you an example. On one 277 stories during this period, while Soviet Union - the Bulgarians, for news broadcast, Genrikh Bardovik Vremya broadcast 552. The Soviet news example - on their national day, speak talked about anniversaries that should is much longer than the American on Soviet television and refer repeatedly be observed: Why not observe the anni­ news, and that is in part behind these to the climate of danger and the Ameri­ versaries of human rights violations by differences - but only in part. The So­ can refusal to accede to Soviet pro­ the United Statesl The murder of Al­ viet news, excluding sports and weath­ posals. lende, the ghettos in Washington, the er, which I don't analyze, runs about 30 Another important technique for thousands who have been killed in to 35 minutes, but it is elastic. News legitimizing Soviet positions is the cit­ Vietnam, the child in Nicaragua who broadcasts can exceed an hour and a ing of other countries' coverage of the is killed by American strafing planes - half, if necessary, expanding to what­ actions of the Soviet government. Sov­ these are the anniversaries we should ever has to be covered. ABC, as you iet media frequently refer to foreign talk about. There has been a great deal know, is 22 minutes of actual news coverage of their country. It is very im­ about human rights violations on Sov­ broadcasting, and that is invariable. portant for the legitimacy of the Soviet iet news; for example, the violations of Close to a third of all the stories that position that The Washington Post or the rights of the American Indian acti­ are not principally about the United The New York Times or the Economist vist [Leonard] Peltier* Obviously one States ascribe responsibility to the Uni­ refer to the Gorbachev interview with of the points on our agenda in Geneva ted States for events occurring outside Time. is the question of human rights in the of our borders. What kind of cognitive Another element in Soviet news Soviet Union; these are counter-propa­ map is imposed on Soviet news? It is broadcasting is the assertion that all ganda, preemptive moves on the part of a map in which the world is coherent, responsibility for the failure to ensure the Soviet media to display American and one reason for that coherence re­ a peaceful world rests with the United violations of human rights in advance lates to the role of the United States, States. Gyorgi Zubkov, the political of Geneva and information about the seen as manipulating, either by itself commentator, recently stated that if American position. or through puppet governments, events there is no movement by the United One rather remarkable program, al­ that happen all over the world. The States on the issue of the "militariza­ most reminiscent of Stalinist rhetoric, United States is shown to bear respon­ tion of the cosmos," then "nothing will took place in the middle of prime time, sibility for mucli that happens, certain­ happen at Geneva." Detente is raised 9:40P.M. Moscow time. It was a docu­ ly of a negative sort, across the globe, again and again by the Soviet Union. I mentary film, lasting about an hour. Its and much of this is covered in very should add that the detente to which vivid footage from location. they refer has specific antecedents and As to the road to Geneva: If you were specific components. It is not merely watching Soviet television these days, a vague term of approbation. When *EDITOR's NoTE: Peltier, a member of the it would be grim. You might not think they invoke detente, they have in mind American Indian Movement, was charged in 1975 with the killing of two FBI agents that there is going to be a summit the kind that resulted in: (a) economic on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South meeting - not for lack of reference, but benefits - for example, the "great grain Dakota. In 1977, he was convicted of the because of the tone of Soviet broadcast­ robbery" (as American opponents of crimes and sentenced by Paul Benson, a ing. First, there is a barrage of stories, detente dubbed it); (b) the agreement federal judge with the U.S. Court of Ap­ as you might imagine, about the Sov­ on the principles of conduct negotiated peals, 8th Circuit. Since then, there have iets' plea for weapons and testing mora­ by [former Secretary of State] Kissinger, been two appeals, each case heard by the toria and the American refusal to ac­ in a document that we consider less same judge. A new trial h as been denied cept it. Recent ASAT [Anti-Satellite important than do the Soviets, particu­ each time. Technology] and SDI [Strategic Defense larly since the Soviet notion of peaceful Representative Don Edwards, chairman Initiative] tests have been covered. coexistence seems to have been embod­ of the House Subcommittee on Civil and In certain cases, Soviet views are pre­ ied in the agreement; and (c) the Hel­ Constitutional Rights, issued a statement in June 1985 asserting that there is evidence sented in stories about third parties. sinki Accord, which specifies non­ which demonstrates "government abuse of Very significant coverage was given to interference in domestic situations and the investigative process, suppression of the visit of Johannes Rau, the SPD which also ratified the postwar borders evidence and falsehood." Edwards has asked [Social Democratic Party] leader in of Eastern Europe. That's what they for a new trial for Peltier, to be heard by West Germany, and clearly a man who mean by detente, and they would like a new judge. [- Based on an article in The is being cultivated by the Soviets. This to see it revived. Nation, June 22, 1985]

Winter 1985 9 subject was the pervasive attempt by and abroad, especially in comparison sion for much of this kind of informa­ American intelligence to subvert the with his mummified predecessors! But tion, much the same thing is happen­ Soviet system of government, carried I would argue that the move to make ing in the Soviet Union. This is out brutally in some cases by financing television more responsive and profes­ especially important since in the Soviet Russian fascist emigres - these are sional is a much longer-term issue and Union someth.ing like 40 percent of all their words - who fought on the side precedes Gorbachev. And it is related, the people in rural areas, and 20 per­ of the Nazis. The viewer saw the car­ I think, to the tremendous potential cent of those in the cities, have not nage of Russian citizens due to these impact that Soviet television has, espe­ gone beyond the fourth grade. That subversives backed by the U.S.A. cially on a public that has been created, means they really cannot read newspa­ The film also showed the CIA as be­ a public for whom international issues pers very easily. ing responsible for and funding the have become the most salient of all Solzhenitsyn Fund. The Solzhenitsyn issue areas. Question: You mentioned the view of Fund, as you know, is supposed to be the world that the Soviets are getting that collection of money from the from their news programs. What other royalties of Solzhenitsyn's books which segments of their programming are in­ is then given clandestinely to support­ fluencing them, would you say, in a ers of human rights in the Soviet Question: You mentioned Bardovik major way, outside news programming: Union. This program asserted categor­ a moment ago. Is there any attempt to Would there be things like game shows, ically the funding came from the CIA. build up any single commentator, as a or anything else, entertainment? The CIA was also shown to be be­ kind of Walter Cronkite figure, or hind Israeli intelligence, and it was im­ somebody who is viewed as trust­ Mickiewicz: There are many chil­ plied that the desire of Soviet Jews to worthy because he is seen talking about dren's programs and many sports pro­ emigrate was related to the intelligence momentous matters? grams. The sports broadcasts are very mission. The visuals showed not only refreshing, to me at least, because wartime footage but also footage from Mickiewicz: The anchor is faceless there's not much commentary: You can the trials of Soviet citizens who ex­ and has, I would say, very little impact. just watch a game. There are dramatic plained how Americans had tried to But there are commentators, like Bar­ shows. Films are by far the most attrac­ purchase their services. dovik, who are brought out at especial­ tive to the Soviet audience, and they are The same themes of the Soviet peace ly important times and who have a featured frequently. There are also cul­ initiative will be present in different kind of authority and ease which is tural programs, essentially uninterrup­ kinds of programs; for example, a show quite remarkable compared to the rest ted productions of opera or symphony on the Moscow Film Festival was not of the talking heads that you see. Bar­ concerts. These, like PBS programs in about film at all, but how film can be dovik was the one, for example, who this country, tend not to be very popu­ used for peaceful purposes - it was was trotted out for coverage of President lar and the viewing audience is skewed really about Cuba and Nicaragua. Reagan's comment that "We're going to upscale in level of education. Gorbachev is given tremendous bomb the Soviet Union in five min­ coverage, and that is very different from utes," which Soviet television played in Question: Are there signs of any type the coverage accorded Chernenko. In English to show its authenticity. Valen­ of programming that imitates Ameri­ the space of five days, there were two tin Zorin is another well-known com­ can programming in any way, for ex­ news broadcasts which led with a story mentator. ample, soap operas or game shows? on Gorbachev. In each, he gave a speech and each one lasted an hour and twenty Comment: If you look at the news­ Mickiewicz: There are game shows, minutes. There also has been signifi­ papers, in contrast to Chernenko, An­ but they are not played for high stakes. cant reduction in the coverage of all dropov, and certainly Brezhnev, you Soviet television, of course, is funda­ other leaders. Some have just disap­ don't see Gorbachev's picture in the mentally educational. It does not really peared, like Tikhonov, but coverage of papers as much. You see the speeches, appeal to greed, sensationalism, or the others has been reduced dramatically. pages and pages of speeches, which is darker side of the human character. And this is not a matter of inelastic comparable, but in the newspaper you time. As I noted, these are infinitely ex­ really don't see him. Comment: I want to ask you about pandable broadcasts. The reduced at­ the timeliness you mentioned, because tention to other leaders and the heavy Mickiewicz: One of the things we in­ I had an opportunity to go to the tele­ coverage of Gorbachev is very meaning­ tend to do is to look at the differences. vision studios in Moscow last summer, ful in terms of Gorbachev's stature. And I think what you're looking at are and I was struck by the fact that at 3 Let me close by saying that Gor­ two different audiences in the Soviet o'clock in the afternoon they were bachev certainly is personally adept at Union. As in the United States, when doing a full-scale dress rehearsal of sto­ manipulating the media, both at home there was a gravitation toward televi- ries, pictures, film reports - the whole

lO Nieman Reports thing - in advance of their 9 o'clock Question: You've been monitoring sion of the debate within the NATD al­ broadcast that night. And I'm curious Soviet television. Have you come across liance on Star Wars. whether you ever saw any kinds of anything comparable to our so-called chunks that were left out. .. or exactly white papers when one of the networks Mickiewicz: There is tremendous what the time-line is between events will focus on a particular aspect of in­ attention to Star Wars as an issue, and and the time that they appear on Soviet vestigative reporting? it is presented in various ways. The So­ television. viet news does not present the issues Mickiewicz: The closest to investiga­ in terms of specific plans and specific Mickiewicz: That's an interesting tive reporting is a kind of segment on research that the Soviet Union has question, and one that we will certainly the news called "Sharp Signal." Such a undertaken to meet the challenges. But look at. What we are doing, just to tell story would look at a dislocation in the there are two ways that it is countered you about the research project, is cod­ economy for which there is some cul­ in terms of stated Soviet policy: One is ing for ABC and Moscow television pability. For example, the required that the Soviet Union will produce as news every story for 27 variables. It will amount of paper was not delivered to many offensive weapons as are neces­ be a rather complex study. One of the a newspaper plant. Or foodstuffs that sary to counter any defensive shield - things we will look at is the time lag have inexplicably and with human cul­ that there exists no successful defen­ and on which issues. Many of the pability or mismanagement disap­ sive shield. issues covered by American television, peared or spoiled en route to the con­ The other form of coverage is the particularly having to do with Soviet­ sumer. An investigative report, then, is more vague formula that the Soviet American relations, are being reported given, with people interviewed all Union will do whatever is necessary to on the day or on the next day. Of course along the way, with a dire warning at maintain its readiness. In terms of it's eight hours earlier in the Soviet the end that this must be cleared up. NATO debates, Soviet television por­ Union. These are inserted in a very serious and trays every case of deviance within weighty way into the news, and are NATD, or other partners of the United Question: Do you see an increase on sometimes followed a few weeks later States, with respect to Star Wars. The Soviet television in the amount of by another segment detailing the Danish refusal to go along with it, the coverage of the war in Afghanistan? remedial measures taken. problems with President Mitterrand, and every similar case is used to show Mickiewicz: They have been cover­ Question: Would you describe the the isolation of the United States, even ing Afghanistan certainly since last extent of the coverage on Soviet televi- from its own partners. 0 August when I began looking at the news. They have been covering it not so much in terms of a war of the Soviet ,..------., and Afghan military battling the guer­ rillas. They cover it principally in two ways. One is to talk about the social NIEMAN revolution that is taking place, the dis­ tribution of land, the distribution of REPORTS water rights, the education of women, the provisioning of medical personnel, Subscribe today! and so on. They portray Afghanistan as developing into a system in the Socialist 0 1 year, $15.00 mode. They also talk about Afghanistan 0 2 years, $30.00 in terms of the intervention of Pakistan, Foreign: Add $10 a year for airmail. and as a country threatened by Paki­ stan, behind which stands the United Name ------States with its supply of materiel. To some extent more recently, there Street ------have been matters treating the military as such. There is one program, for City example, that was a tribute to a rank­ and-file Soviet soldier, who disarmed a State/ Zip grenade to save a group of children. Send this form with your check, made payable to the There is a good deal of the sacrifice of Nieman Foundation, to: Nieman Reports, P. 0. Box 4951, Soviet troops, the elder brothers helping Manchester, N.H. 03108. Thank you. the Afghanis. L------Winter 1985 lJ HOMER BIGART

Wil Haygood

OTTINGHAM, NH - He no longer drives, and so every N morning his wife takes the four-wheel into town to pick up the newspapers, which he says he needs to start the day. There is a vegetable gar­ den on one side of the house and a flow­ er garden out back, and a hard wind that comes down off the Pawtuckaway mountains in the evening. On the telephone seven months ago he had said, "Don't come out. I don't have anything to talk about." Two months later he said the same thing. But he began to soften three months ago. Then an illness came and he was hospitalized. Two weeks ago, out of the hospital, he said, "You can come out, but I think you'll be wasting your time" - and he put his wife on the phone to give directions. His name is Homer Bigart and he is ranked with the greatest war correspon­ more, but he has never wanted to make On the far side of the field sprawled dents of all time. Most of his career, dinner conversation about it. He likes some dead. One boy lay crumpled in which began in 192.7, was spent with living in seclusion, and is not at all sen­ a shallow slit trench beneath a rock. the New York Herald Trib!ille. He went timental. There are no clippings of sto­ Another, still grasping his rifle, peered to The New York Times in 1955 and ries in a trunk because he didn't save from behind a tree, staring with sight­ worked another sixteen years. When he any. The war dispatches are in libraries less eyes toward the Liri plain. A third joined the Times, they thought enough and on microfilm. lay prone where he had fallen. He had of him to take out a full-page ad in The Homer Bigart has never written a heard the warning scream of a German New York er, heralding his arrival. book and there are no memoirs. The shell. He had dropped flat on his There have been awards. A George season is late now and he still has no stomach but on level gro!illd affording Polk Award and a Berger Award. The intention of writing a book. Maybe it no cover. Evidently some fragment had A. J. Liebling Award was for "four dec­ was his pride that kept talk of a book killed him instantly, for there had been ades of single-minded attention to his distant. All he ever wanted to be was no struggle. craft, a persistent skepticism toward all a reporter, someone with a deadline to forms of power, and tenacious pursuit beat. of social injustice long before such re­ Once or twice a year, someone A failure in architecture porting became fashionable." comes to visit. "Old reporters," says his The two Pulitzer Prizes, in 1946 and wife, Else Minarik. Bigart was born 77 years ago in 1951, were for international reporting. In 1943, he was moving with the 5th Hawley, Pennsylvania, a small town It is the stuff of legend and a little Army through Italy: that straddles the Pennsylvania-New

12 Nieman Reports Photo: Courtesy of The Boston G lobe/ Frank O 'Brien York border. They kicked him clean out He puts his big hand around a tiny group of Americans to reach Hiroshi­ of the Carnegie Institute of Technology. glass with vodka in it, causing the glass ma. We flew in today in a B-17, our "I had this damn fool idea I was gonna to disappear as he lifts it to his lips. The pilot, Captain Mark Magnan, finding be an architect. I discovered I couldn't cooked vegetables served for lunch are a hole in the clouds over Kure and set­ even draw." vegetables he and his wife planted and ting the plane down on the tiny runway He packed and went off to New York picked from their garden. of the naval air base there with about University, where he majored in jour­ seventy feet to spare. nalism. He never told anyone he was going to be a flop in life if he couldn't First overseas assignment One war would end, others begin. In be a reporter. He went into journalism the wars following World War II, they because he liked English, and when he When Homer Bigart found out he would start whispering about Bigart. found journalism, he found himself. was going overseas, he bought a $45 He would begin crossing the fields as After graduation in 1927 he got a job at suit. London was the first stop. "It was if he had laid the sod, going into foreign the Herald Tribune as a copyboy and January 1943, a quiet time," he says. A countries with road maps, and learning took an apartment, for three bucks a month later he found himself hunkered the terrain. He would begin taking the week, in Brooklyn. in a plane, flying over West Germany chances that would get some of his His start at the newspaper was not with a convoy. The newsman sitting buddies killed. a gleaming one, as he would remain a next to him was Walter Cronkite, then copyboy for five long years. "I had fears working for the wire services. About of becoming the oldest copyboy in jour­ ten planes were in the convoy. The A journalistic coup in Greece nalism," Bigart says. He finally made it enemy attacked, the correspondents onto staff in 1933. He began by writing ducked, then came up firing guns In May of 1948, George Polk, Middle obituaries, then moved to general as­ themselves. One of the planes went East correspondent for CBS, was travel­ signment, and then to the police beat. down. "We lost a New York Times man. ing through the hilly countryside of In the newsroom, he sat near John Went down right into the North Sea," Salonika, Greece, looking for the guer­ O'Hara. "He had a temper," he says says Bigart. The Times man was Robert rilla chieftain Markos Vafiades. Polk about O'Hara. "I saw him throw an ash­ Post. would be found, murdered, in a ravine tray at a guy one day. Didn't hit him Soon Bigart was filing from the war­ not far from Salonika. He had been but it caused quite a rumpus." wrecked fields of Sicily. shot in the back. In Washington, Walter The roster at the Tribune was heady. Lippmann was leading the probe to Joseph Alsop, Sanderson Vanderbilt, Lying snug in a tuft of red-top hay, investigate Polk's murder. George Polk: they were all there. After we felt no feaL We were 700 feet above Homer Bigart was at the Moskva work everyone would gather at Bleeck's, the road, and height gives a deceptive Hotel in Belgrade when he heard of on West 40th Street, for drinks. feeling of confidence. We had yet to Polk's murder. Something flinched in When it was time to move on from learn that the Germans could lift a him: He would go and find the rebel the Tribune, many did just that. Sand­ storm of shrapnel to our ledge, ripping leader. "I don't know whatever made me erson Vanderbilt went to The New some of us to shreds before the day was think I could get away with it," Bigart Yorker. George Polk went to do radio gone. says. "But I figured I would take up the work with CBS. John O'Hara went to trail where Polk left off." write novels. Homer Bigart stayed, There were some talented reporters He sent word to the Greek Com­ watching them come and watching covering World War II. A. J. Liebling, munists that he wanted to find Markos them go. Then, in 1943, the editors told Ernest Hemingway, Marguerite Hig­ Vafiades, and waited in his hotel room. Bigart to start packing. He was going gins, and Ernie Pyle were there. They There was a rap on the door. "I opened overseas as a Tribune correspondent. would all, along with Homer Bigart, the door. There were three Greeks, one rise, rise as beautifully as you can in of them a hunchback. They came in. war, by writing on the run and sending The hunchback spoke English. He said, He is seated at the kitchen table. the stories back home. 'Bigart, I understand you want to see There is mist outside the window, and Homer Bigart was not covering war free Greece! I said 'Yes.' a dying elm tree in the yard that he as anyone's poet, but his touch seemed "They would test me first. They told points to, brooding about: "Lost it this uncommonly graceful and perceptive. me to stand on a street corner in Bel­ year. A tragedy!' The home is more than When the first wave of American re­ grade at night. I would be met there. I a hundred years old. When he says he porters went into Hiroshima after the stood on the street corner. Nobody is cold, his wife starts a fire, and soon bomb was dropped, Bigart was there. came. A couple of nights later there was the wood is crackling in the fireplace, another rap. The same people. They and there is the red light of the fire A party of newspapermen led by told me to make arrangements to leave which warms the war correspondent. Colonel John McCrary was the first the country. They told me to tell the

Winter 1985 13 other correspondents I was going to He never traveled with the pack. One He covered a generation's worth of Rome. I told the head desk clerk - who minute he was in this country, the civil rights battles, from Little Rock, was probably a spy - that I was going next, another country. Arkansas, to Jackson, Mississippi. He to Rome." In May of 194 7 he was filing dis­ interviewed Malcolm X in Central He did not tell the Tribune where he patches from Jerusalem. Again, he Park,· W. Somerset Maugham on a boat was going. made the headlines: "The Jewish off the Hudson Bay, Thomas Wolfe in "I took a sack full of stuff, left every­ Underground: Reporter Sees 50 Sworn "some New York hotel where they put thing else in the hotel. It was night. I in - Homer Bigart Taken Blindfolded him up at." stood on a street corner and was picked to Hide-Out of Haganah in Jerusalem He covered the court martial of Lt. up by two Greeks who didn't speak Cellar: Is First Foreign Correspondent William Calley down in Fort Benning, English. They took me down to a rail­ to View Organization's Ritual'' Georgia. He went to Europe to cover road yard, put me in a compartment. In 1948 the Hungarian government the trial of the accused Nazi leader, I was there an hour and finally heard said his dispatches were too sensitive Adolf Eichmann. it move. We traveled all night." The next to the leftist cause, and they told him One wonders if there was much of a day the train stopped and he was loaded to leave the country: personal life. There was, but it was not into a truck, where the travel contin­ without its sadnesses. His first two ued for one more day. Then they trav­ This correspondent crossed the wives died. But during his last years of eled about ten days on mule across Austro-Hungarian frontier at 8 o'clock work at The New York Times, some mountains and valleys, eating by camp­ tonight, four hours ahead of the dead­ friends invited Homer Bigart out to din­ fire. "I didn't have enough clothes and line stamped in his passport by Hun­ ner. The place was the Moon Palace, a had to borrow a coat from one of the garian police, who gave no reasons for Chinese restaurant. They brought along rebels," he says. One night a figure on the summary expulsion. another dinner guest, Else Minarik, horseback appeared from out of the who wrote children's books and whom mountains. It was Markos. Homer Big­ When the fields in Korea were blue they wanted Bigart to meet. One thing art was the first American newsman to with smoke and war, he was there. A led to another, and the writer of chil­ interview him. July 1950 dispatch tells of a day's worth dren's literature married the war corre­ of battle. spondent in 1970. The day was beautifully clear, with Else Minarik owned this home here a breeze so sharp that Markos wore a The unit suffered severe casualties in Nottingham. After Bigart filed his leather jacket over his British dress. As and was forced to leave all its heavy story on Friday afternoons, they'd light a precaution against spying aircraft, we equipment behind. This correspondent out of Manhattan, taking to the roads sat beneath trees, the General with his was one of three reporters who saw the to get here. "We'd stop for dinner and maps spread on the ground around him. action, and was the only newsman to be here by sunset," says his wife, an ele­ From the distant Nestorian front came get out alive. The others, Ray Richards, gant woman with a Danish accent. the heavy rumble of Greek Army artil­ of International News Service, and Bigart was blunt with the Times dur­ lery Corporal Ernie Peeler, of Stars and ing his last year of work: He told them Stripes, were killed by enemy fire. he was taking his wife with him when Later, in the dispatch, Bigart de­ he went out on the road, didn't want scribes Markos: to leave her behind. And they were a In the Congo and Cuba team out there, crisscrossing the coun­ Were it not for the rough life of a Par­ try over highways. "Oh;' she says, "I tisan chief, he would have a tendency Bigart joined The New York Times loved it." to stoutness. His eyes are closely set in 1955. Again, he was off, to cover the and deeply lined from squinting into civil war in the Belgian Congo. He in­ continued on page 29 the wind and sun. The brown hair un­ terviewed Fidel Castro in the Sierra der his Partisan cap [is} long and bushy Mountains in Cuba. When the Viet­ His mouth is broad and expressive. He nam War raged, he went there, too. He has the gift of a quick and charming was in his mid-SO's during the Vietnam Wil Haygood is a smile that can alter instantly a fac e War, an old pro in a young man's game. reporter with The which, in repose, seems hard, impa­ Some correspondents head back to the Boston Globe. tient, pitiless. home office. Homer Bigart stayed out there. Back in the states, this was the head­ He would be one of the first Ameri­ line: "U.S. Newsman Writes from can correspondents to write critically Greek Rebel Hideout." of his country's involvement in that Homer Bigart. He was moving now. war.

14 Nieman Reports Photo: Courtesy of The Boston Globe/ Stan Grossfeld A New Broom or an Old Hand~

Jack Foisie

Does freshness or experience make for better foreign reporting~

ndoubtedly before, but cer­ visible to the enemy, looking a bit sen­ acting genius posing as a hapless and tainly since The New York ior in his helmet, carrying a notebook, bewildered individual, unable to do U Herald Tribune dispatched and dangling a cigarette, he caused a anything - except slowly tap out beau­ Homer Bigart to England to report on mini-barrage of German mortar fire to tiful journalistic prose. World War II, there has been debate descend on us all. As I groveled and There have been a surprising number within the chambers of editors on what scratched at the ground, trying to dig of men and women in our business sort of person is best qualified to be a myself in, I growled: "This guy Bigart who, like Bigart, used dogged determi­ foreign correspondent and cover wars. isn't going to last long!' nation and their own quota of pixieish Sooner or later, there comes the follow­ Well, as we know, Bigart, for the Her­ behavior to succeed spectacularly in up question: How long should one re­ ald Tribune and later for The New York both war and peacetime reporting main in a foreign post? When does one Times won Pulitzer Prizes and other abroad. But, in this day and age, I have begin to get stale? When should fresh honors. Today he lives in New Hamp­ come to join the consensus that a firm eyes supplant continuity? shire retirement with no more scars grounding in a language and a culture I start with mention of Bigart be­ than an aching back. I don't know how is essential to a foreign correspondent. cause Homer, on the surface, had no he acquired that ailment, since he never There must be a grinding effort to ac­ qualifications at all except tenacity. He had to bend over to roll up his sleeping cumulate an understanding of the had been one of the longest-serving bag; we did that because Bigart was an issues of a region. The ability to keep copyboys in the Herald Tribune city room; he stuttered; he seemed to lack aggressiveness; and he spoke no foreign language. I have little knowledge of Bigart's in­ troduction to war. My acquaintance with this benign, bespectacled, skinny fellow came midway through the Sicil­ ian campaign which was proving to be successful, although with hard fighting, at the very critical time when the Allies badly needed a victory to offset their losses to the Japanese in the Pacific. As a Stars and Stripes reporter, I was asked to show this newcomer Bigart the ropes. So we drove by jeep along the north coast to division headquarters for a briefing, then to regiment for another one, and then to battalion for yet another. Nothing would do for Bigart, how­ ever, but to advance on foot to company and then to platoon. There, apparently Waiting at Panmunjom, South Korea, Spring 1953 jack Foisie

Winter 1985 15 learning on the job never must end. ing to that conflict, I don't think I readers. How much explanation was Ever-improving communications, would have achieved any meaningful needed to explain, say, the underlying even in remote and primitive areas, understanding of Asian politics and causes of the South African racial con­ make the job more challenging. The how they affected the struggle. For flict? How often must it be said, in at­ necessity to get-up-and-go to be on the example, the surface impression about tempting to understand the racist poli­ scene of a breaking story is more im­ the Cao Dai was that it was a quaint cies of the South African government, portant than ever. I guess I'm suggest­ religious sect whose temple headquar­ that it took the United States a century ing that reporting from abroad is not ters featured large dragons carved on and more to achieve legal racial equal­ as much fun as it once was. the walls and mingled with pictures of ity for its blacks? This brings me to the flip side: How such patron saints as Victor Hugo. But I would snort when reading a new­ long should correspondents remain on I came to realize that its estimated two comer's well-written but surface im­ their beat? Should they be more or less million followers and its private army pression of Soweto, the giant black automatically rotated to another for­ were sapping the strength of the Saigon ghetto outside Johannesburg. But then, eign posting, or brought home to reac­ government, our ally. perhaps it was time for me to write quaint themselves with America every another feature on Soweto, to explain three years or so, which seems to be the In South Africa: During the eight that it was not a slum as parts of Har­ norm for American diplomats. years I was assigned to Johannesburg to lem may be. Soweto life is appalling be­ And what about the practice of leav­ cover that country's struggle, I made cause more than a million blacks live ing a newspaper's own foreign coverage three trips into southern Angola to see in monotonous sameness. Row after to a "fireman," who makes a sortie into the black guerrilla leader Jonas Savim­ row, mile after mile, their three- or four­ a hot spot, does his thing, and then bi. His fight is against the Soviet-sup­ room houses are all alike. The inhabi­ comes home to bask in glory? That ported regime in Luanda and, therefore, tants' depression gets drowned in seems to be the pattern for papers with he is backed by the white South Afri­ drunkenness or is lessened in church­ a limited budget, but this accelerated can government. going each weekend. use of "fresh eyes" can result in some On each foray into Savimbi head­ So I have my own doubts about how appalling misconceptions being given quarters, I swore I would never again long a correspondent should remain in to the public. undertake the flesh-bruising truck ride, one area. Having not seen American My long-time foreign editor on The but when other opportunities arose, I baseball for the twenty years I was Los Angeles Times, Bob Gibson, fav­ always went back. The big, hearty, almost continuously overseas, I now ored continuity. For nine years he kept flamboyant, self-styled general and delight in watching the game. me in Southeast Asia, where I was president of his liberation movement is So I will use a sports simile: Foreign based in Saigon or Bangkok, and so I a complicated fellow. Sheepish about correspondents are like baseball pitch­ saw almost the entire period of Ameri­ his association with the South African ers. The manager - the foreign editor can military involvement in Vietnam. white regime, he is shunned by most - learns who his best starters are and And until my retirement in 1984, I black African leaders because of that he has a good idea of their capabilities. spent the last eight years of my career connection. I still am not certain He hopes they can go the distance. If based in Johannesburg, reporting on the whether patriotism or ambition is his they falter, he needs to send in relievers. simmering black protest in South primary drive, but I came away con­ It is, as Bob Gibson said, a judgment Africa and the minority white govern­ vinced that he has a quality - a bull­ ca~ 0 ment's efforts to forestall genuine re­ dog tenacity - which keeps him and form. The Rhodesian war was another his forces edging closer and closer to story, ending in independence from Luanda and a showdown. Britain and establishing black rule in Jack Foisie, Nie­ the country now known as Zimbabwe. Bob Gibson was not a great com­ man Fellow '4 7, Gibson, a thoughtful and savvy per­ municator with his staffers. I once has retired recent­ son, is no longer foreign editor. He rea­ chided him in a telephone conversation ly as foreign cor­ sons that a foreign correspondent's across ten thousand miles for not pro­ respondent for most important responsibility, to him­ viding me with more "guidance." He The Los Angeles self, his editors, and the newspaper's replied somberly, "You're getting paid to Times. For the readers, is to make correct judgments. make judgments. When we think past twenty years To come up with a good average, Gib­ you're off base, we'll let you know!' he has reported son believes that a reporter needs time It was a flattering, if not entirely sat­ from such overseas posts as Saigon, on the scene - time to acquire knowl­ isfactory, response. After being in a Bangkok, Cairo, and Johannesburg. edge and to evaluate an area's leaders. country for two or three years without Last year he was awarded the fourth Without the nine years spent in Viet­ home leave, I worried about being out annual fo e Alex Morris Jr. Memorial nam and in Indochina countries relat- of touch with the interests of American Lectureship at Harvard University.

16 Nieman Reports The Press Beneath the Sea

William Gordon

The Dutch press may be the freest in Europe.

he Nazi forces took over Hol­ 1618, making the Dutch capital city the land militarily during World first newspaper center in Western T War II, but they failed to sub­ Europe. The oldest known French and due the intellect and drive of the Dutch English newspapers were printed by the people. If a free press can be a barom­ Dutch and exported to other countries. eter by which to judge a free and demo­ These newspapers were also printed in cratic society, then this little country the interest of refugees coming in to the of fourteen million people figures high country. There were Jews coming in on the list. Nestling gently against the from Spain and Portugal, and Hugue­ roaring waters of the North Sea, it's the nots from France, to a country where "press beneath the sea!' they could all live in peace. The four million families in Holland Also, down through its history, the are among the best informed people in country has been a place of refuge for the world. Children are taught in the political and religious exiles who were home to read newspapers and maga­ allowed to bring their periodicals with zines at the early age of five and six zines. The difference was that in Hol­ them. years. They are also encouraged to pay land the Dutch were buying foreign Between 1940-45, during the days of attention to the issues and news which publications as often as their own. Be­ Nazi occupation, the Dutch press ex­ they see on television and hear on the cause of their facility with languages, perienced its most difficult period. radio. reading for the Dutch comes as a plea­ Many newspapers ceased to appear, "We believe this leads to constructive sure and not a burden. some voluntarily. But the first day of experience;' one member of a Dutch Today, television has not dimmed the occupation, in May 1940, also marked family commented. "It is part of the old enthusiasm for newspaper readership in the beginning of the underground press family tradition in Holland!' Holland as it has done in so many other in Holland, when a sizeable number of countries in the Western world. Every newspapers began publication, even at Dutch family subscribes to one or more great risk. Most were opinion newspa­ When I lived in New York as a grad­ daily newspapers, plus one or more pers with circulations that ran into the uate student during the 1940's, I mar­ weeklies, along with several magazines. thousands. veled at the crowds that lined up in Some of these subscriptions are from Among these was Trouw, which is front of newsstands to buy the morning abroad, and every member of the family unique historically. Twenty-five mem­ and evening papers. I was awed also by reads them. bers of its staff were killed by Nazis. the crowded subways, with scarcely any Today it has a circulation of 150,000. space between the people, who, how­ Politically, it leans more closely toward ever, never were without a newspaper. Freedom of the press has existed for the Social Democratic Party, although Thirty years later, when I went to many years in Holland, being interrupt­ it has no official ties with the party. Holland, I saw the New York picture ed only by two major events - the Like Trouw, a few of the other under­ come alive again, especially at the Napoleonic dictatorship and the Nazi ground newspapers were able to survive newsstands in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, occupation. after the occupation. The national and The Hague, where people were A Dutch newspaper was being pub­ newspaper, Het Parool, was among rushing to buy newspapers and maga- lished in Amsterdam as far back as these, having emerged during the early

Winter 1985 17 days of the Nazi occupation. The com­ number in the United States; the rest k ee Journal. There are no tabloid news­ munist newspaper, De Waarheid, had are regional and local. Of course, the papers in the country, such as are found some support in the beginning but lost small land area is a significant factor, in Britain. Neither will you find any­ it after showing its position on the as it is possible to distribute a paper thing existing journalistically on the Hungarian crisis. Some underground from one end of the country to the level of England's Daily Mirror in con­ newspapers faded away after World War other in a matter of hours. Among the tent and format. II; some merged with provincial news­ most important national newspapers The leading weekly newspapers are: papers that were able to make a come­ are: The Telegraph (the largest in circu­ Elseviers Magazine, Elseviers Week­ back. lation), Algemeen Dagblad, The Volks- blad, Vrij Nederland, Haagse Post The primary areas of the Dutch press Magazine, De Tijd, Hervormd Neder­ are the daily newspapers, the non-daily land, De Groene Amsterdammer, and newspapers, magazines, and the free­ Nieuwe Linie. distribution newspapers (supported by Holland has its share of news-gather­ advertising only). There are no Sunday Gyms For All ing agencies. As of 1979, there were 3 7 newspapers. press and news agencies operating in Most of the daily newspapers are The Dutch are sports-mind­ the country, including AFP, France; members of the Netherlands Newspa­ ed people; one out of every five is Antara, Indonesia; Belga, Belgium; per Proprietors Association and about involved in some kind of sports DPA, Federal Republic of Germany; 70 percent of the other newspapers be­ activity, and the press recognizes Reuters, United Kingdom; UPI, United long to the Non-Daily Newspaper this by giving extensive space and Press International, and AP, the Associ­ Association. The organization which airtime to these activities. The ated Press. The Dutch national news represents the magazine press in Hol­ citizens are enthusiastic followers agency is ANP, which has its offices in land is the Netherlands Organization of of physical fitness programs, espe­ The Hague. Magazine Publishers. cially those aimed at losing The press is less partisan today than Most of the working journalists be­ weight. It is a rare thing to see an it was fifteen years ago. The time has long to an organization similar to that overweight Dutchman. They play passed when you could identify a news­ of the Newspaper Guild in the United soccer, and by far the largest paper as representing one religious States, called the Netherlands Union of sports organization in Holland is group or another. The Volkskrant, once Journalists. the Royal Netherlands Football highly visible in the Catholic world, no A subscription press, 97 percent of Association with more than longer calls itself a Catholic newspaper. its newspapers go to regular subscribers 600,000 members. The same is true with respect to some by direct delivery. In 1979, there were -W.G. other newspapers that once carried a 83 daily newspapers published in Hol­ highly Protestant visibility. The news­ land, as well as 4,000 other periodicals, paper Trouw remains the only paper including weekly newspapers and mag­ giving exceptional coverage to religious azines. Daily circulation at the end of and church life in Holland, but strictly 1978 was in excess of 4,484,000. At the krant, Ret Parool, NRC Handelsblad, on a non -partisan basis. beginning of 1978, the ten largest news­ and Trouw. These newspapers are well Although sectarianism in the press paper enterprises accounted for 82 per­ written and edited, and they do a seems to be waning, it is still reflected cent of the circulation. Newspaper comprehensive job of covering national in some provincial newspapers where publishing in Holland has followed the and international events. Some of the diverse political and religious creeds are route of many other countries, with coverage of affairs about the United represented. In southern Holland, with more and more of the smaller papers States is more thorough than what is a predominantly Catholic population, being taken over by the larger conglom­ done by the U.S. press itself. The Dutch Roman Catholic newspapers are in the erates; but under these conditions circ­ press is more diversified than the press majority. ulation has increased rather than found in many other Western nations. More diversity is found in other prov­ decreased. There is always ample choice whereby inces because there is a mixture of It is an evening press. Only 15 per­ the reader may obtain a variety of opin­ cent of the newspapers published in ions, and there is no threat to freedom Holland are for morning distribution. of expression. Most Dutch are up and off to their In terms of quality and content, the work early in the morning, and they printed press in Holland is comparable like to read their newspapers and other in content, analysis, and balance to publications quietly in their homes in such newspapers in the United States the evening. There are twelve national as the Atlanta Constitution, the St. newspapers in Holland, double the Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Milwau-

18 Nieman Reports Roman Catholic and Protestant-domi­ In 1974, the Dutch government more than 50 percent of an estimated nated newspapers, along with more established what it calls a Press Fund, 170 newspapers have disappeared since politically neutral publications. The providing newspapers, both daily and 1965. circulation of these newspapers also re­ weekly, and magazines with loans or Relations among the printed media, flects the population density of these credit facilities. This assistance, for radio, and television are relatively inde­ provinces, all the way from a few thous­ those who apply for it, is to help var­ pendent. One of the major differences and to 90,000. ious publications with reorganization is that the press operates on a strictly The provincial newspapers are finan­ or restructuring plans so that they may commercial basis, while radio and tele­ cially sound; the quality of content is stay in business or become profitable. vision are purely nonprofit operations. generally excellent. The press in these Under the law, radio and television, in­ areas also carries local, national, and cluding even cable television, are not international news. The content also permitted to operate on a profit basis. reflects the character and skill of jour­ nalists who are local people from the South Africa same area. The same characteristics Radio and television in Holland are can be found in the news over radio and vis-a -vis Holland not very different from the written television. The tendency is to adhere to press in their news coverage. Run by a the non-sensational and the non-dra­ The Dutch press, strong in number of associations, they cover the matic presentation of the news, which its Calvinist tradition of human news with the same emphasis as the seems typical of the tradition of Dutch rights and its orientation toward daily and weekly newspapers, but to a journalism. And this has been the prac­ the outer world, leads most na­ limited degree. "We are still a reading tice in Holland almost from the coun­ tions in the West in criticism of people;' some Dutchmen say, "despite try's inception. developments in South Africa. the small linguistic area we live in. We Holland has a large number of re­ Dutch journalists are constantly are publishing a lot of books, between gional newspapers despite its size geo­ attacking the policies of apartheid Holland and Belgium. Flemish writers graphically. The press on the average and publicizing what they feel are are very popular in Holland." day carries five times as much foreign "unjust practices in that society." The broadcasting associations have news as newspapers in other countries The average Dutchman, whose been in operation in Holland since in Europe, the exception being a few ancestors may have settled in the 1928. They are membership organiza­ leading newspapers in countries such vicinity of the Cape of Good tions and they work together in a foun­ as France, Germany; and Switzerland. Hope in 1652, openly refuses to dation known as NOS, which takes Beyond this, the main items of news accept the theory that any blood care of all technical equipment used are those linked with the country's ties still exist between Holland jointly by the associations. The NOS, national interest and philosophy. News and "white South Africa!' the foundation, also has its own radio and interpretation of the news take up -W.G. and television programs based on gen­ most of the space in Dutch newspapers. eral-interest matters. There are two groups of weekly mag­ There are four radio channels and azines in Holland - the popular and two television channels. They are the serious. Panorama, with a circula­ quasi-government-owned and operated. tion of 400,000, is the most popular, The Press Fund board membership is The channels are subdivided, reflecting catering to young people, entertainers, made up of independent experts. various political and religious persua­ and celebrities. The Review, with Recommendations for assistance are sions. They are the Social Democrats, 250,000 subscribers, is the more serious submitted through the Ministry of Cul­ the Catholics, the Protestants, and a publication, dealing with issues and tural Affairs, Recreation, and Social division representing some of the frag­ discussions in depth. Welfare. The Dutch government claims mented groups. The two networks sim­ One of the most interesting publica­ that such assistance will go a long way ilar to the American model are the ones tions coming out of Holland is Jnter­ in helping the press to maintain diver­ with the most members. There is also mediaire, widely read by academics, sity and will also encourage the estab­ an intellectual network, something like writers, artists, and professionals. It is lishment of new publications. our own Public Broadcasting Service. distributed free to students, and to all Another factor at work is mergers. The Dutch often complain that the professionals under age 40. Older sub­ From 1967 to 1981, economic condi­ programs coming from this network scribers must pay. It is noted for its in­ tions in Holland forced many smaller are good in quality but fail to have a depth articles on social, political, cul­ newspapers to merge with larger ones, substantial number of viewers. NOS tural, and economic subjects. Extensive thus losing most of their original iden­ also represents Dutch broadcasting advertising also accounts for its popu­ tity. A similar move has taken place abroad and is a member of the Euro­ larity and economic success. among the non-daily newspapers where pean Broadcasting Union. Cable tele-

Winter 1985 19 vision has come to Holland. In addition to the various associa­ tions and organizations representing broadcasting groups, other institutions The Wild West Image also have the right to ask for airtime broadcasting of television programs starts late in the - such as church groups, cultural or­ The evening. Crime is not played up on the tube. Also, until recently, there ganizations, and political parties. The were no American soap operas with their sexual themes and bedroom government limits itself to granting the scenes. The Dutch believe that illegitimacy and poverty are high in power to transmit, to dividing available the United States and that this can be traced to the influence of tele­ broadcast time, and to keeping a watch­ vision. ful eye over operations so that broad­ A Dutch acquaintance said, "We don't have these problems. But casters do not infringe on the public we fear that some day they will come. You have more sexual freedom, order, morals, or security of the state. and you are always talking about sex. You display it and further accen­ If there is a violation, the broadcasters tuate it by means of television and your newspapers." can be called in by the government and Western cowboy films are still very popular in Holland. The Dutch their permits can be revoked in case of are awed by the vast mountain scenery and the wide-open spaces of impropriety. The government divides the United States and its frontier spirit. As a result, the press often the airtime between NOS and the var­ reports on what it calls "shooting from the hip!' The Dutch media feel ious associations. this is typical of American policy decision-making and that there are Holland has had color television too many guns in our country - "Every American seems to have a gun!' since 1967. Although it carries adver­ In the eyes of Europe, President Reagan is a cowboy. People have tising, it is not handled in the manner a picture of Americans riding horses like Reagan, and they see Ameri­ of commercial television in the United cans shooting one another in films. The "wild West" image remains States. Advertisements are programmed entrenched in their thinking. immediately before and after the news -W.G. programs every day except Sundays, Good Friday, Ascension Day, Christ­ mas, and national holidays or days of mourning. Advertising of alcoholic drinks is permitted with some reserva­ tions, but tobacco advertising is com­ effects upon their young people. But time and colonial history. The press re­ pletely forbidden. despite opposition, some of these films flects this international image. Other Thirty percent of the films used on are slipping into the country against the reasons include the small, compact size television are of Dutch origin, but in protest of the Dutch. When I was in of the country. There are twenty-two recent times, more and more British Holland, Dutch television was featur­ million Dutch-speaking people in this films are being used. In the past, some ing Little House on the Prairie, and it area, which includes part of Belgium. television associations, especially the was very popular. Films about the en­ Even Antwerp, Belgium's main port and Catholic one, have refused to use many vironment and adventure, and especial­ outlet to the sea, is dominated by the of the American television films. They ly those about animals, also rate high. Dutch. fail to set a good example for the audi­ The Dutch have the feeling that Because Holland is a member of the ence, they claim, adding that too many English-speaking films, especially those European Economic Community, the crime and sex scenes dominate the pro­ from England, are much better for their press follows very closely the happen­ ductions and tend to have misleading audiences. They seem to prefer British ings and activities affecting the Com­ English to American English. Only a munity - such as European affairs, few German films are seen on Dutch defense, and security. Due to Holland's television and even fewer French. Most strong Calvinist background, human countries on the continent send their rights have always been a very impor­ films to Holland in their native lan­ tant topic in the Dutch press. Overseas guage, which is then sub-titled in developments in emerging nations are Dutch. another important source of stories The appearance of foreign news in because of Holland's experience in the Dutch press has always been exten­ countries such as Indonesia. sive. Part of the reason is due to geog­ raphy. Another reason is Holland's out­ look on the outer world (particularly Holland is an open society, but the the European continent), and its mari- people are deeply concerned about

20 Nieman Reports other influences seeping in that may main the "underdogs." elect a president, they are electing a affect old values and old ways. Many Journalists told me that, nonetheless, president of the world. Holland is a still rely on what they call "the strength "Nobody in Holland lives below the small country and doesn't have to wor­ of the old traditions, which have made poverty level. We have a very abundant ry about the accidents in the streets. us what we are today ... !'The average welfare program. We have no poverty This makes it easier for them to follow Dutchman feels that Holland is the and no slums, such as one finds in American foreign policy through the kind of society that is not likely to suc­ other parts of Europe. People from Suri­ press. That policy represents 250 mil­ cumb to adverse outside influence. nam, even those on welfare, can pay lion people as a whole. It is not that Nonetheless, the country's long his­ their way. But some are on drugs and easy in Europe, for through the Com­ tory as a place of refuge for political and the labor market is difficult for them." mon Market, they are dealing with nine religious exiles has led to the current The Dutch government is trying to different policies representing the same situation wherein Dutch attitudes to­ create an incentive program similar to number of people. This is another rea­ ward minorities are changing, especial­ the one in Germany which encourages son why the Dutch press gives more ly toward those from Surinam, a pre­ guest workers to return to their home­ attention to the United States' policies dominantly black country. Located on land after they have completed their and less attention to what is happening the northern coast of South America work contracts. Such programs are in nearby Luxembourg. between French Guiana and the former directed especially toward the Turks I got the feeling from journalists and British colony of Guyana, Surinam and others whose habits and customs publishers in Holland that the press became independent from the Dutch are alien to Western societies. However, also conceives of itself as having a colonial empire in 1975. It still receives most of the people from Surinam are special obligation to lead as well as to economic support from Holland. legally Dutch citizens, so these pro­ inform. "News and information gen­ During the 1970's, before gaining in­ grams are less effective with this group. erally carried by the press tend to fall dependence, Surinam experienced a in line with the character of the people;' political explosion. Increasing tension a Dutch journalist told me. "After all, developed between those of African and The press strongly supports the con­ we are a calm and reticent people, not Asian descent and many, especially cepts and ideals of a free society. It often given to emotions!' A thirst for from the former group, left the country looks to the United States, which it know ledge is also characteristic of the to come to Holland. The influx resulted considers the leader of the free world, Dutch, and Calvinism remains deeply in a rise of as much as 70 percent in to take greater responsibility for these rooted in their thinking, whether they unemployment among the Surinamese. concepts. It expects the United States are Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or athe­ Friction developed also between the to use all its means and resources to ists. Dutch and the Turks, who are in Hol­ maintain and protect freedom for According to leading Dutch journal­ land as guest workers. Competition is everyone. The old Dutch have not for­ ist Maarten Scheider, "The daily press strong in Holland's low-skill job mar­ gotten the sacrifices Americans made remains the most important interna­ ket. This has brought about incidents on their behalf in World War II. tional spiritual traffic. In this traffic, the of bias and discrimination that are not There is a great interest in the United Dutch newspapers, although varied, always reported in the news media. States, much more than the average form a solidly constructed and reliable In fact, there is much sensitivity in American is able to perceive. The vehiclei the vehicle responds to the reporting news about minorities. When Dutch press is critical of the United needs of the Dutch community, which it comes to crime, most newspapers States, especially its racial and human is marked by highly differentiated polit­ will not mention the race or nationality rights policies. ical and religious make-up, yet one of those involved, and will print only Many Dutch journalists wonder how with a truly democratic character based an individual's initials. Suicides are not America can talk so boldly about the upon a truly democratic order." 0 reported at all. The few livelier and sen­ lack of civil and human rights in other sational newspapers will mention eth­ countries when evidence of racism nic backgrounds. remains so deeply entrenched in its In a further effort to help the image own society. They note that the United William Gordon, of the Surinamese people, the Dutch States still has its Harlems, its slums, Nieman Fellow press attempts to publicize the positive racial and ethnic discrimination, and '53, is a retired side of their presence in Holland and poverty in a land of plenty. How can journalist and dip­ focus on their contributions. You 11 read Americans continue to tolerate this? lomat. His most stories on Surinamese bands, restau­ The United States is a mighty power recent post was as rants, and bars. The young Dutch are that generates fear, and the Dutch press Cultural Attache generally sympathetic toward the cause is critical of this vast concentration of at the United of the people from Surinam who, de­ power. States Embassy at spite their popularity in Holland, re- They feel that when the Americans The Hague, Netherlands.

Winter 1985 21 rus is not. Troubles can get you head­ repeated night after night after night, lines. Big troubles can get you big will be file tapes of past rioting and South headlines. dogs and shotguns and whips and tear The American press dovetails the gas. Unless your government can find State Department in another way, too. a way to invade every television news Africa News tends to follow United States for­ library in the free world and expunge eign policy and today American foreign from their shelves what has already continued from page 2 policy is much more concerned with been recorded, banning cameras from your nation than with Uganda. Also, in seeing what is currently happening in is enough sameness between our na­ the case of the Ugandas of this mad your townships, in Cape Town, in tions and their racial experiences that world of ours, it is often difficult getting downtown Johannesburg, will be a South Africa today represents a mirror reporters into such countries to get futile attempt to control what you can­ to Americans; a mirror in which many firsthand news out. not control. in my country see themselves then and Reporters have to sneak into Afghan­ Whenever any government attempts now; see hatred then and now; see guilt istan at great risk and even then their to hide its actions, the assumption will then and now; and if one is an editor, mobility is limited. The northern terri­ be made that it has something to hide sees news stories. tories of India are closed. Try to send and what is being hidden is more often I was asked by one of your colleagues a correspondent to North Korea or than not sinister. Deception always is to discuss why it is that South Africa Albania. The press was excluded from dangerous, always costly, always found is attracting an unprecedented media the Grenada invasion. Russia, China, out, and always boomerangs to cripple exposure these days, particularly, he and Vietnam control the news by con­ the deceivers. said, "in view of the commonly held trolling both entry into their nations What, pray tell, leads to this paranoic belief in South Africa that the country and movement and access within their view of the media? Is it the fear of the is being crucified by the foreign media." countries, once a Western reporter is known? Is it the fear of the truth? Is it Surprisingly, perhaps, I was asked admitted. All other Communist coun­ the fear of reality? this same question a few months ago tries ape the Soviets. How sweet it would be to be able to by faculty members of the University Parenthetically, totalitarian regimes conduct business in complete secrecy. of Pennsylvania at a luncheon meeting all behave in roughly the same way. And how dangerous. And how antitheti­ in Philadelphia. They wanted to know They deny entry to reporters whom cal to democratic belief. why South Africa appeared to dominate they know or think might write un­ Journalists do not expect such be­ the news, seemingly all of a sudden, favorably about their nation; they kick havior from democracies or from those and why not earlier, and why now? out reporters who displease them; they nations that pretend at democracy. This They wanted to know why Uganda, for harrass and suffocate and eventually is what I said to the University of Penn­ example, was not being accorded the strangle their own free or opposition sylvania professors. I also said that the same daily news coverage and broadcast press; they blame whatever ills they press in the United States holds such prominence? All the more so, they suffer on the media; and they whine democracies and pretend democracies argued, because blacks were mistreat­ that the media, especially the Western to higher standards of conduct because ing and killing blacks in Uganda in far media, report only death and destruc­ they advertise themselves as keepers of greater numbers than were dying in tion and ignore the good news. higher standards than others. Invariably South Africa. How come? They asked, It should come as no surprise, there­ this gets the press into trouble because how come? fore, that I was deeply saddened on the it sets the press against the self-right­ I gave several answers. I confess my eve of my departure from the United eous when the self-righteous mesmer­ answers failed to satisfy some of the States to learn that your government ize themselves into thinking they can Pennsylvania professors and I have no succumbed to the tired totalitarian do no wrong. doubt they will fail to satisfy some of trinity - blame the press, bully the I said, finally, that the stories about you. press, ban the press. For the life of me, South Africa are not new to the press. I said that newspapers and television I do not know what your government They have been there. Maybe not in news departments in the United States hopes to gain, other than to enhance its everyday prominence. But the best of practice their craft the same way that reputation for repression, and mock the American press has paid attention our State Department practices diplo­ protestations that a free press exists in to the anachronistic behavior of South macy - with a crisis mentality and a South Africa. Africa for at least a decade or more. To crisis response. I told them, as I have It is fashionable today to poke a cen­ be sure, the earlier coverage did not told others, by way of example, that sorship stick in the eye of television; enjoy - if I may use that word - the Cyprus was a running news story ten assuming that blindness makes for sustained publication and broadcast years ago, Sri Lanka was not, and today dumbness. It does not. What your gov­ that it now does. But neither has the Sri Lanka is a running news story, Cyp- ernment now will get in the free world, unrest in your country. After all, the

22 Nieman Reports incidents at Sharpeville and Soweto were discrete events. They each had a beginning and a middle and an end. United States - South Africa Leader What is happening today - what has happened since August a year ago - is Exchange Program different. It is a deadly sputtering with consequences far beyond your borders. Founded in 1958 and incorporated in the Commonwealth of The American media certainly does Pennsylvania as a charitable educational association, USSALEP is a not have a lock on righteousness, self­ multi-racial association of Americans and South Africans privately or otherwise. Nor does the United initiated and supported. Administrative offices are in Washington, D.C.,\ States. We bar scholars and writers and Johannesburg, South Africa. from the United States with the bless­ USSALEP perceives its role as that of a catalyst - quietly fostering ing of the Supreme Court. We still treat the creative interaction of individuals and organizations sharing its the American Indian off and on the concerns and goals. Its major programs include exchanges of profes­ reservation with such benign disdain sionals who share a dedication to improving the human condition, that the American Indian is at the top transforming human relationships, and fostering human dignity in both of every measure of misery - alcohol­ societies; a Careers Development Project that assists mid-career blacks ism, suicide, infant mortality, disease, in acquiring the credentials that will enable them to move to manage­ unemployment. We still mishandle and ment/leader levels in all areas of South African society; and symposia mismanage old people, blacks, Hispan­ and team visits that reach across group divisions to break down stereo­ ics, and poor whites and, for a very types and promote authentic communication among all people by wealthy country, we still have wide­ whom the history of South Africa will be shaped. spread illiteracy and poverty and a rap­ idly developing permanent underclass. So we can least afford to be righteous. But I will tell you what we do have a lock on. We have a lock on what is in. Therefore, television sequences essence of what it is all about - espe­ news. from South Africa were used less fre­ cially the impact of television images It is news when working men are quently. upon the viewers - in a book about kept from their families for a year at But do not be deluded. our Supreme Court. Addressing himself a time. The hanging of a black poet followed to Southern politicians' reaction to the by murder and mayhem downtown in Supreme Court's school desegregation It is news when black spots are re­ your largest city will bring it right back decision he wrote: moved that have been home for people where it belongs - on the front page "Compulsory segregation, like states' for decades. and at the top of the television news. rights and like 'The Southern Way of It is news when token representation As you all are well aware, television Life,' is an abstraction and, to a good is given to some minorities in your news plays a significant role in shaping many people, a neutral or sympathetic population and the same is denied to images. For an older generation of one. These riots, which were brought the majority. Americans - blacks and whites - my instantly, dramatically, and literally It is news when moderates are jailed generation, what is happening in the home to the American people, showed and when prisoners are tortured and streets of your cities and townships as what it means concretely. Here were when children are imprisoned. captured by the television eye is deja grown men and women furiously con­ Of course hurricanes and earth­ vu. To see dogs snarling at blacks; to fran ting their enemy: two, three, a half quakes and hijackings and air disasters see angry men in uniform whipping dozen, scrubbed, starched, scared, and will drive lesser stories inside a news­ blacks; to see tear gas-filled streets; to incredibly brave colored children. The paper or deeper into television's half­ see burning vehicles and looted stores; moral bankruptcy, the shame of the hour of news or out of newspapers and to see black youngsters being dispersed, thing, was evident!' magazines and off the air all together. chased, and beaten by whites is like "And so," Bickel concluded, "the Boredom and sameness can drive placing my generation in a time capsule Southern leaders had overplayed their stories out of newspapers and off the and transporting us to Alabama and hand. Mob action led to the mobiliza­ air, too. At one television newsroom in Georgia, Mississippi and Florida, and tion of Northern opinion in support of the United States just a month ago, the burning, looted cities of the West the Court's decision - not merely South African scenes were beginning to and North twenty-five and twenty because the mob is disorderly, but be­ look so alike that one newsman dubbed years ago. cause it concretized the abstraction of them "wallpaper." That is, they had a The late Alexander Bickel, law pro­ racism . . . !' terrible sameness. Boredom was setting fessor at Yale University, captured the These racial clashes in our own

Winter 1985 23 South dominated the front pages and shaken, and will continue to shake sticks, or land mines, or being am­ the airwaves. For its part, the South them is South Africa. bushed to death in a remote country. complained that it was being crucified And not just at Harvard, not just at Accordingly, she told me, the anti-apar­ by the Northern press. But as Bickel the elitist schools with a liberal cant. theid feeling is from the heart of many suggests, what had been ephemeral in Daily, in campus newspapers and the young Americans. The same young the abstract became concrete in the general press, there are stories and pho­ Americans who are being dismissed by reality. It was a magnificent innocula­ tographs of students being carried off social commentators as nonpolitical tion. Not a cure, mind you. But a sensi­ by the police for blocking doorways in and noninvolved. tization. And to this day, scenes of protest or sitting in offices to protest - I know that there are among South whites attacking blacks disturb many in Vermont and illinois and New York. Africans those who think it is just for Americans. They didn't like to see it a These are stories, too, by any Ameri­ those reasons that South Africa is an quarter century ago. They don't like to can editor's definition of news. As long easy mark for American students. This see it now - not in the United States, as such protests continue, as long as view, I submit, is a misreading and a not in South Africa, not anywhere. blacks in South Africa are killed, just miscalculation of tenaciously held stu­ The fact that your government has so long as apartheid exists, so will pro­ dent beliefs. It would be a mistake to banned television cameras from areas test and so will news coverage of that dismiss their actions as capricious and of unrest and made it more difficult for protest. opportunistic. Lyndon Johnson made print journalists to report will not help such a mistake. to change this picture. The images al­ So much for us. What about you? ready are embedded in the free world's To my journalist colleagues, I want memory and will be recalled with file to salute many of you. You have had a tape and stories and editorials every much tougher slog of it than I ever time there is a report of unrest in South faced, or do most editors and reporters Africa. Your government can encapsu­ face in the United States. For us, late itself and hope that the world will screaming "First Amendment" when­ go away but it will not. What will go ever a lawyer with a libel gets within away will be any residual notions that shouting distance, or the government South Africa enjoys a free press because In a recent conversation with a young slaps a secret stamp on a document, or it enjoys freedom. student about these campus protests, a wayward judge closes a hearing is as But it is not just my generation that she wanted me to understand two very close as we come to grappling with is upset by what is happening here. Do important aspects of the protest. I, in danger. We do not live in a euphemistic not underestimate the depth of feeling turn, want to share them with you be­ society where the Internal Security Act among the educated young of the Uni­ cause I think they will provide you can close you down; or you are faced ted States on this point - those young­ with additional insights into what is with prison or banning; where your sters who are being taught and trained happening in the United States. livelihood is threatened; where the to become the leaders of my country. Her first observation is that she and authorities can send their police after I have been at Harvard University for her generation - unlike all that have you for displeasing them in print or little more than a year now and the preceded it - are steeped in the very quoting someone they have decided only issue - the only issue - that notion of equality. This is so because should have no voice. I know you learn unites large numbers of students and they grew up when there was no Jim to cope. And some of you do it very attracts crowds, whose emotive feelings Crow, no legal and officially sanctioned damn well. I am not certain I would be and size rival those of the Vietnam era and condoned segregation of the races. able to say that about Howard Simons. on American campuses, is divestment. "This generation," she said, "will never To my fellow Nieman Fellows, I want Make no mistake about it, divestment be convinced that blacks and whites to suggest that diversity is essential to is but a symbol of their hatred for apar­ shouldn't be treated equally." democracy. I come from a pluralistic in­ theid as a guiding principle of a suppos­ Her second observation is that the culcation, where disagreements about edly civilized nation in the year 1985. protests over Vietnam by an earlier gen­ who should be president or what the One might have thought that the eration and those over South Africa by policies of the nation or anyone's indi­ Reagan administration's reduction and her generation are profoundly different. vidual newspaper, for that matter, tightening of student loans would have Vietnam, she said, was an American should be, are an absolute. Indeed, I brought mass protest to the campuses. adventure with American youth con­ would not expect all of you to agree on After all, this is a pocketbook issue - stantly at risk. Not so South Africa. how your nation ought to be governed the kind we are told that in a capitalist There is no American stake in what or your newspapers run, either. Al­ society should grab future capitalists by happens in South Africa, at least none though I do not expect you to agree on their throats and shake them. But it that directly threatens American youth. matters of state, I do, though, expect has not. Rather, the issue that has Americans are not stepping on punji you to unite to protect your profession,

24 Nieman Reports your craft, your calling, from the as­ saults of government - seemingly well-intentioned or not. You should and South African Nieman Fellows* must unite to protest censorship, to ward off the stifling of ideas and expres­ Year Nieman Fellow Affiliation at time of appointment sion, to prevent the expulsion of foreign correspondents and the denial of access 1961 Lewis P. Nkosi The Drum, Johannesburg to your correspondents and those from Aubrey Sussens Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg abroad. If not, you will be next. To my younger colleagues, especially 1962 Sebastian J. Kleu Die Burger, Cape Town my black colleagues, I would say this. 1963 Allister Sparks Rand Daily Mail Because your voices have been un­ 1964 Robert Steyn Cape Argus, Cape Town heard, there is a temptation and a ten­ dency to adopt the idea that reporters 1965 Nathaniel Nakasa* * The Drum and editors, most particularly Western 1966 Tertius Myburgh The Star, Pretoria reporters and editors, have to be either 1967 Louis Louw Die Burger, Cape Town for or against the black struggle. I want to tell you that this is an abhorrent 1968 Michael Green The Friend, Bloemfontein notion to most American editors and 1969 Harald Pakendorf Die Vaderland, Johannesburg reporters. Editorial writers, commenta­ 1970 John Ryan Rand Daily Mail, tors, columnists, cartoonists, yes - Durban bureau they can take a stand for or against. But not reporters. Rather, our reporters are 1971 Ton Vosloo Die Beeld, Johannesburg expected to sublimate their private feel­ 1972 Stewart Carlyle The Financial Mail, Durban; ings and their private thoughts, no Natal editor matter how strongly held, and strive to 1973 Alf Ries Die Burger be fair. Note: I did not say objective - there is no such thing. But in the Uni­ 1974 Ted Doman Cape Herald ted States, to maintain a voice that is 1975 Andrew Drysdale The Star, Johannesburg heard by all members of a community, 1976 Percy Qoboza The Daily World and the appearance of fairness is as import­ Weekend World, Johannesburg ant as fairness itself. Over the past forty years, the American press has tried 1977 Hennie van Deventer Die Beeld mightily to put committed journalism 1978 Obed Kunene Ilanga, Durban at a distance. The new journalism of 1979 John Mojapelo Rand Daily Mail the 1960's sent shivers up the spines of the American profession and has been 1980 Aggrey Klaaste The Post, Johannesburg all but purged, at least from the estab­ 1981 Fleur de Villiers Sunday Times, Johannesburg lished press. Do not make the mistake 1982 Ameen Akhalwaya Rand Daily Mail of demanding our journalists to declare themselves. It is not in our tradition. 1983 Salomon de Swardt Die Beeld Nor should it be. 1984 Ivor Wilkins Sunday Times We, in the United States, were sad­ 1985 Zwelakhe Sisulu The Sowetan, East London dened by the closing of the Rand Daily Mail. I, personally, always am saddened 1986 Richard Steyn The Natal Witness whenever a newspaper dies or is put to *Under USSALEP sponsorship sleep. As I noted on an earlier occasion **Deceased - when I presented Allister Sparks with the Louis Lyons Award for con­ science and integrity - "if the pattern continues and the voices of conscience and integrity are snuffed out like so South Africa, how you treat your own was blessed to have been born in a many candles illuminating dark places, press will be how you will be judged by country with the single most important there will be even more darkness than the press of the rest of the free world. concept of freedom - the First Amend­ now exists in Allister's native land." I cannot presume to tell you how to in­ ment. My own measure of what's right And so I say to the government of terpret your laws vis-a-vis the press. I with the world is the measure of press

Winter 1985 25 freedom. Unabashedly, I believe that "Security," he said, "also lies in the Africa. the freer the press, the freer the society. value of our free institutions, a can­ Finally, if I live long enough, I would It is no accident that totalitarian tankerous press, a ubiquitous press love to return to South Africa in the regimes - fascist and communist, must be suffered by those in authority year 2010 - twenty-five years from those identical twins of repression and in order to preserve the even greater now - to see the changes that will the virulent enemies of democracy - values of freedom of expression and the have been wrought by inevitability; to wince at and shrivel from and abhor right of the people to know ... !' celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the free speech and free press. Amen. Nieman-South Africa association; to I know that governments - the Uni­ I now want to leave where I came in. dwell a few weeks in the house of peace ted States government is no exception After Watergate, I often was told The and equality; and to break the prover­ - often regard the press as an enemy; Washington Post "got" President Nixon. bial bread in a land where hatred and a detractor of what's right, and a threat Nonsense, I replied and still do. Mr. brutality and meanness no longer hold to the security of a nation. I, of course, Nixon "got" Mr. Nixon. And when sway. And where fairness, decency, and disagree. I can only offer as a counter someone in your country suggests to a sense of each person's worth and dig­ argument that made by Judge Murrey me that South Africa is being crucified nity are important and vital and cared Gurfein in the celebrated Pentagon by the foreign media, I cry anew, "Non­ about and deeply embedded in the mar­ Papers case: sense!' South Africa is crucifying South row of all South Africans. D

will devour and that will slip a burr inches of forward movement. under the saddle of what we should still Finally, I wager that you will not en­ Social call the "system." counter hostility for your activism. The Please light that fire inside the news­ newspapers that have made it success­ room. Suck in your guts and start fully into the mid-1980's are generally Justice making pests of yourselves. You know led by people with generous visions. what stories are not getting into print. But newspapers are largely sleeping continued from page 6 Please be the catalyst for writing giants these days. Wake 'em up. about the complex and desperately The spreading ghettos of blacks, and very silent VDT newsrooms. And complicated job of redesigning public whites, and Hispanics are threatening wisely, we have invested heavily in spe­ education, the need for a better welfare the livability and the very economic cial sections providing people with a system that does not perpetuate unem­ base of almost every large city. They are daily diet of almost every conceivable ployment, the problems of teenage becoming steamrollers that will force thing they have demanded. pregnancies and disintegrating families, a new national crusade for better oppor­ I say the time now has come for news the need for tax breaks and other subsi­ tunities for the urban poor. Yes, a to make a comeback in our newspapers dies for drawing businesses into the powerful "economic rights" movement and society. depressed areas. is upon us. It is your special business And, that's where you come in. I And covering these smoldering prob­ to help your newspaper or television think reporters and editors have been lems out on the street today is not a station to focus it. too quiet lately. Where is that social professional dead-end path. You have As that appealing Mr. Good Guy, bite of earlier times? the expertise. Put it to work. I tell you John Chancellor, said recently: You are privileged to be in an enter­ - it will pay off in a better job and bet­ ". ..When you did get out on the prise able to effect change. Do you have ter pay. Give your all to this story, and street (as a reporter), life was both glor­ the privilege to walk ahead without you need not worry about distancing ious and horrifying . .. .You saw day looking back? yourself from your roots or from your after day things that were wrong with I hope and pray that your generation newspaper employers. Work from your society, and you began to think that of journalists will roll up its sleeves. I strengths, your special know ledge. something more should be done to see good signs. The time has come to From the housing projects in South make it better. That didn't make you shake up the newsrooms of this coun­ Bronx to the teeming refugee camps of a Republican or Democrat, but it made try again, and the topic must be the un­ the Sudan, there is some grubby and you think that action is better than in­ finished business of society because the vital reporting to be done. action. safety net has sprung a tear. It's up to you to keep your editor's I am an optimist; I believe the vig­ feet to the fire. Start producing the "If there is a bias in the press," he orous practice of vigorous journalism memos that produce the meetings in said, "it is not a bias toward liberalism, can produce great stories that people the editor's office that produce the two it's a bias toward activism!' D

26 Nieman Reports THE BooKSHELF

ward responsibility on its way; some of Newshounds on the Trail these contributors have a good word to say for the now-defunct National Press The Responsibilities of Journalism tives wept in the parlor, and then gradu­ Council, an independent, nongovern­ Robert Schmuhl, editor. University of Notre ating to reporter, where he got scoops mental organization that for ten years Dame Press, 1984, $13.95. by making up stories out of whole received and investigated complaints cloth, still operating on the basis that, from the public about fairness and ac­ by Richard Dudman as Hecht put it in his autobiography, curacy. Some top news organizations, "there were no responsibilities beyond including The New York Times and the eorgie Anne Geyer, syndicated enthusiasm!' Associated Press, boycotted the Coun­ G columnist, worries a lot about Schmuhl quotes a Chicago Tribune cil, and last year it went out of busi­ today's journalists. She says they are column in 1983 to show that vestiges ness. becoming too adversarial, "like some of Ben Hecht-style journalism remain: Max Lerner, author, newspaper col­ group of self-righteous monks!' She says "If you go to journalism seminars, if umnist, and Notre Dame professor, they jump from crisis to crisis, more you listen to learned profs and pomp­ goes so far as to suggest that the gov­ intent on titillating than informing. ous editors debate the ethics and morals ernment take a hand in policing the Most of all, she worries about journal­ of modern journalism, you get the media, along the lines of the British ists who are in the profession for celeb­ wrong idea. That stuff has nothing to Official Secrets Act. rity, money, and power, and she attacks do with breaking a story and getting it Journalism has, indeed, changed Seymour Hersh's disdain for national in the paper. There are only two rules since the days of Ben Hecht. Televi­ security secrecy as "careerism gone of real newspapering: Get the story. Get sion's impact, as Lerner says, reduces mad." it out." debate to "the quick take, the devastat­ Some others who share her worries Such relics of uncouth behavior, says ing statistic, the iterated slogan." It can took part in the 1982 conference that Schmuhl, are "lamentable yet indige­ destroy careers, tip elections, and bring gave rise to this book of essays. Jeff nous to American journalism in all of down governments faster than was con­ Greenfield, an ABC News commen­ its rowdy individualism and diversity." ceivable when print was the only med­ tator and print columnist, charges the But he winds up with the optimistic ium. media with arrogance toward both its view that, "as journalism becomes What to do about all this? The real subjects and its audience and says it more professional and as readers and question is how to achieve improved risks "undermining its own critically listeners become more sophisticated press performance without damaging important constitutional freedom." and vigilant, acts of irresponsibility the wildly diverse institution that has will be unmasked for what they are, given Americans probably the freest An outside critic, scarred from past and they will generate complaints and flow of information in the world. tilts with the press, takes some hefty criticism." Lerner analyzes what makes report­ swings, too. John E. Swearingen, retired To help this supposed progress to- ers tick. He says that an earlier genera- chairman of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, now heads the bailout of the Continental Illinois Bank. He accuses reporters of ignorance, superficiality, lack of preparation, and bias, especially when it comes to coverage of the oil business. In an introduction, Robert Schmuhl, an assistant professor at Notre Dame, sets the stage for such worrying by re­ calling the horror story of Ben Hecht's career in Chicago journalism - first as a "picture chaser," rummaging through trunks and closets and making off with pictures of the deceased while the rela-

Winter 1985 27 tion of star reporters - John Reed, speaks of freedom plus responsibility, telling a reporter to be responsible: Edgar Snow, Walter Duranty, John Gun­ but his emphasis seems to be the same Often all that means is that the reporter ther, Vincent Sheehan, Edmond Taylor as that of the first Joseph Pulitzer, when should kill a story that will cause em­ - "got their drive toward uncovering he said he wanted the St. Louis Post­ barrassment or trouble. the hidden from two sources, Marx and Dispatch always to be "drastically inde­ Finally, it's too bad that, with all Freud." In later times, he detects a pendent!' Silk says that the strength of their talk about the changes brought "whiff of the satanic to be uncovered" our country and our news media has about by broadcasting, not one of the in the reporting of the Pentagon Papers, been their diversity, "and I want papers contributors calls for getting the gov­ Watergate, and the Vietnam War. and individuals who will say what they ernment out of its control over the con­ True enough, but it seems to me that mean or believe, even if other people tent of radio and television news and there is a simpler explanation for re­ think they are outrageously wrong!' extending the First Amendment to porters' zeal. Good reporters are not Along with some hot air, there are cover electronic as well as print jour­ called newshounds for nothing. Like nuggets of wisdom like that in this nalism. hunters or sports fishermen, they are short book. It is worth reading, espe­ driven by a love of the chase. Tamper cially for people in the news business. Richard Dudman, Nieman Fellow '54, with that drive to catch what's hard to It does have shortcomings. For all the retired Washington bureau chief of the get, hobble it by too much concern for talk about responsibility, none of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, now helps his responsibility and conformity, and you contributors notes that responsibility wife, Helen Sloane Dudman, operate damage the engine that makes it all go. can cut two ways. Someone is always her two radio stations in Maine. Sure, Ben Hecht was a caricature, and any good reporter has standards of truth and fairness and exercises some self-restraint. But basically, it's up to re­ porters to get the news and it's up to the editor or news director to cut out In Support of Colun1ns the libelous and the tasteless, to insist on fairness, and, in rare cases, to raise Wits & Sages what else they do (appear on television questions of national security - not Neil A. Grauer. The johns Hopkins and the lecture circuit L and sundry in­ necessarily resolving them in favor of University Press, 1984, $15.95. formation about their lives and fortunes the govemmen t. We all know of cases (which are often substantial). where national security has been an by Donald W. Klein Grauer never explains why he picked excuse for cover-up. his particular dozen (Jack Anderson, Edwin Newman, the NBC anchor­ f you turn to a colleague and say, Russell Baker, Erma Bombeck, Jimmy man and wordsmith, recalls how the I "Did you see that great Buchwald (or Breslin, David Broder, Art Buchwald, Carter Administration blamed the pres­ Buckley or Royko or Russell Baker) col­ Ellen Goodman [NF '74], James Kilpat­ ence of American reporters and camera umn today?," no one is going to say, rick, Carl Rowan, Mike Royko, and crews for encouraging those who held "Who's Buchwald?" Apart from a few George Will). The level of syndication the hostages in Iran and for prolonging television personalities, few people are was presumably one criterion - the the affair. His answer is that the media's better known - or more widely read number of newspapers carrying the col­ job is to cover events, not to leave them - than our top columnists. Just how umns ranges from the highs of Ander­ uncovered, not to be in the business of influential they are is another matter. son and Bombeck (1,000 to 900) down suppressing information: "We would In any case, Neil Grauer has come up to 60 (Breslin), but most are in 2.50-550 take on a tremendous responsibility if with a wonderfully simple idea: He's newspapers. There's certainly a fair bal­ we said that the people of the country written a dozen compelling profiles of ance on a left-right political spectrum. were not entitled to see what is going our best known, usually provocative, Washington, D.C., predominates as the on." and most loved or hated columnists. If home base (six of the twelve), followed And the responsibility of the journal­ poorly handled, the results could have by New York (three), and Boston and ist, Newman says, "is to be a journalist. been People magazine sketches in hard Chicago (one each). Fittingly, perhaps, That may sound sententious. It is sen­ cover. Happily, in Grauer's exceptional­ Erma Bombeck seems to have no base tentious. But what I mean is to be a ly deft hands, the profiles are first-rate - any kitchen will do. competent, qualified journalist. That is in all respects. He interviewed each of The book's greatest asset is the way not easy. There are many forces work­ the columnists, and from these inter­ in which Grauer weaves together his ing against it. Very many. And strong. views constructed a sketch of how own commentaries with each journal­ But that is the job." these men and women came to their ist's words. He combed through thou­ Leonard Silk, the Times' economic calling, what they think of the profes­ sands of columns, and given the liter­ columnist, like all the rest in the book, sion, how they go about their work, ary skills of an Ellen Goodman or a

28 Niem an Reports George Will or a Kilpatrick, it's not critic Ch,ules Fisher wrote. . "The surprising to find some fabulous prose. autocrat of the most prodigious break­ A fine example of Grauer's economy of fa st table ever known. He is the voice Homer space and his flawless sense of transi­ beside the cracker barrel ampli fi ed to tion is found in the Royko profile. We transcontinental dimensions. He is are treated to a bit of Roy ko's devas­ the only non-political figure of record Bigart tating wit that simultaneously disman­ who can clear his throat each day and say, 'Now here's what I think .. :with tles a hapless Chicago alderman and the assurance that millions will continued from page 14 defends Chicago's garbagemen. A few listen." lines later, there is a hilarious article on Out of the firing line a stray kitten that Royko jokingly A first-rate collection of first-string threatened to feed to piranhas; one profiles, Wits eJ Sages is a fascinating In the afternoons now, his wife sees paragraph later, we find Royko's incred­ read. serenity in the eyes of her husband. ibly moving column about his recently "This is the first house he's ever lived deceased wife. Donald W Klein is a professor in the in," she says. It was a career spent on Grauer is gifted also in writing cap­ political science department of Tufts the road, a lot of rootlessness, but that sule summaries of his columnists. Wit­ University went with the job. ness his closing lines on Jimmy Breslin: Homer Bigart has had illnesses dur­ "Breslin is by turns boastful and sensi­ ing these past few years, and he has tive; hard-nosed and caring; boorish waged a battle against every one of and charming; anti-intellectual and in­ them. Sometimes he leans on his cane. telligent; a joyful teller of lies and a Sometimes he leans on his wife. He tough reporter of truths. He appears to never leans on the memories, can't even have as many faces as the city he loves recall what the last newspaper story he has stories. They were made for each wrote was about or where it was writ­ other." Or Grauer will use the perfect ten from. It just may have been written self-description of a columnist. An "from someplace down in Mexico!' But example is Kilpatrick's: '"I'm more of Books Received at he isn't sure. an opinion writer than an analyst; he Lippmann House On September 2, 1945, Homer Bigart says, breaking into a grin and chuckling was aboard the USS Missouri off Tokyo softly. 'Lots of opinions."' Dwarf Rapes Nun; Flees in UFO: A Bay. This is the beginning of the story Like many readers, I suspect, I plung­ Novel of Journalism . Arnold he filed that day: ed directly into a few sketches of some Saw is\ak. St. Martin's Press. favorite columnists, thinking that 268 ENG : Television News and the New Japan, paying for her desperate throw pages were probably about '200 more Technology. Richard D. Yo akam and of the dice at Peml Harbor, passed from than I wanted to read. But Grauer's Charles F Cremer. Random House, the ranks of the major powers at 9:05 In c. judgments are so solid and his prose A.M. today when Foreign Minister style is so engaging that I soon moved Freedom for the College Student Press. Mamom Shigemitsu signed the docu­ from one profile to another, and then Louis E. Ingelhar t. Greenwood Press. m ent of unconditional surrender. realized that this is an important book Role Playing and Stereotyping on Tele­ about important people. That, in turn, vision: An Annotated Bibliography of The story was read aloud to Bigart. led me back to his introduction, which Studies Relating to Women, Minori­ "I didn't know if that story ever made is surely one of the most thoughtful ties, Aging, Sexual Behavior, Health, it into the paper the way I wrote it;' he brief things in print about the world of and Handicaps. Edited by Nancy said, smiling, looking at the wife, then our syndicated columnists. Grauer, a Signorielli. Greenwood Press. laughing, then letting his eyes go to the free-lancer formerly on the staff of the The Blade of Toledo: The First 150 fireplace. Baltimore News-American, traces the Years. John M. Harrison (NF '52). He wanted to rise from his chair to history of the American columnists, The Toledo Blade Company. escort the visitor to the door, but his explores their various roles in American The Fall of Saigon. David Butler. Simon back hurt and he couldn't, so he said journalism and politics, and assesses & Schuster. goodbye from his chair, and turned his their importance. Tobin's English Usage. Richard L. Tobin. eyes back to the fireplace. And there he Grauer's ability to ferret out just the R. J. Berg & Company, Inc. was, a reporter, a war correspondent. right quotation is clear in this excerpt: Video Media Competition: Regulation, He believed in the singular beauty of Economics, and Technology. Edited doing one thing in life and doing it Despite any shortcomings, a sy ndica ­ by Eli M. Noam. Columbia Univer­ well, of beating the deadlines. 0 ted columnist could become, as press s it y Press. Reprinted courtesy of The Boston Globe.

Winter 1985 29 NIEMAN NOTES

o one who recently journeyed out of Marder plans to devote his time to writ­ -1969- T state, the mystery in travel remains. ing about foreign affairs and is currently Massachusetts to Florida by rail occupied "engaged in research for a book on U.S.­ J. ANTHONY LUKAS is the author of a luxurious 36 hours, including four be­ Soviet interactions, 1956-85." He adds that Common Ground, published in September tween trains to window-shop in New York it is "a highly ambitious project begun in by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Common Ground City. There followed the homey ritual of 1978 with a one-year fellowship from the is the story of the lives of three Boston fam­ establishing one's own territory in Car 820, Council on Foreign Relations." ilies during the school integration crisis in bedroom C; countless catnaps; meals in the the 1960's and 1970's. diner; restful sleep in a lower berth; and long spells of gazing out the window in - 1954- dusk and in sunlight as the countryside - 1970 - slipped by. HENRY TREWHITT, diplomatic corre­ The return home via jet plane was ac­ spondent in the Washington bureau of the HEDRICK SMITH, chief Washington complished in two hours and ten minutes Baltimore Sun since 197 4, has been named correspondent for The New York Times, - barely time enough to gobble down a deputy managing editor for international prepackaged dinner and tackle one cross­ affairs for US. News eJ World Report. word puzzle. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE Waiting by the luggage carousel in the Statement of Ownership, Management airlines terminal at flight's end, not only - 1963 - and Circulation was the puzzle unfinished, but also one's (Required by 39 U.S.C 36851 pockets were still weighted with a fine layer SAUL FRIEDMAN has taken a year's Title of publication: Nieman Reports. Publica­ of sand and a few smooth shells. leave of absence from the White House tion no. USPS 430-650. Date of filing: 9/28/85. Frequency of issue: quarterly. No. of issues pub­ Shrugging into a heavy wool coat against beat of Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau lished annually: four. Annual subscription price: the nip of autumn was to experience the to teach at Columbia University, the $15. Complete mailing address of known office unlikely vision of mittens and suntan oil. School of Journalism, in New York. of publiclltion: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Abrupt transitions wreak havoc on the MA 02138, Middlesex County. Complete mailing imagination. address of the headquarters or general business - 1966 - offices of the publishers: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. Full names and complete mailing address of publisher and editor: Howard - 1939 - ROBERT C. MAYNARD, editor and pub­ lisher of the Tribune (Oakland, CA), has Simons, One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138; Tenney B.K. Lehman, One Francis Ave­ EDWIN J. PAXIDN, Jr.'s 46-year-old son, been named to the board of directors of the nue, Cambridge, MA 02138. Owner: Nieman Jack, suffered a fatal plane crash south of Associated Press. Because of time con­ Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Paducah, Kentucky, on September 14 while straints, he has resigned from the American One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. stunting in his single-engine biplane. Society of Newspaper Editors board of Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other In 1976 he had succeeded his father as directors. security holders: none. The purpose, function, editor of their family newspaper, the Padu­ and nonprofit status of this organization and the cah Sun. Formerly he had been a Vietnam exempt status for Federal income tax purposes has not changed during preceding 12 months. War correspondent for NBC. - 1967 - Extent and nature of circulation (first number is average number of copies each issue during JAMES R. WHELAN, former editor of preceding 12 months, and second is actual num­ - 1950 - The Washington Times, has joined the staff ber copies of single issue published nearest to of the Washington-based monthly, Ameri­ filing date): Total number copies: 1400; 1400. Paid MURREY MARDER, senior diplomatic can Politics, as editor. circulation, sales through dealers and carriers, correspondent for The Washington Post, re­ street vendors and counter sales: none; none. tired in September. He was honored at a Mail subscription: 1001; 984. Total paid circula­ staff dinner given by Katharine Graham, - 1968- tion: 1001; 984. Free distribution by mail, carrier chairman of the board of the Washington or other means, samples, complimentary, and other free copies: 309; 314. Total distribution: Post Company, and by executive editor Ben JACK C. LANDAU was named a winner 1310; 1298. Copies not distributed, office use, left Bradlee. It was recollected that Marder had of the sixth annual Hugh M. Hefner First over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: 90; 102. devised the phrase "credibility gap" to de­ Amendment Award. He is the former Return from news agents: none; none. Total: scribe the differences between events and executive director of the Reporters Com­ 1400; 1400. I certify that the statements made what President Lyndon Johnson had to say mittee for Freedom of the Press, Washing­ by me above are correct and complete: Tenney about them in the Vietnam War era. ton, D.C. B.K. Lehman, editor.

30 Nieman Reports has been appointed visiting journalist at The series, produced by Blackside, Inc., The proud father distributed cigars to his the American Enterprise Institute for Pub­ Boston, is scheduled to be broadcast on the fellow Fellows as well as all members of the lic Policy Research, District of Columbia. PBS network during the 1986-87 season. Nieman staff. He is executive news editor Smith, winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize of Caretas magazine in Lima, Peru. for international reporting and his coverage of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, - 1984 - # # # has been with the Times for 23 years. He was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ JANE DAUGHERTY, formerly a reporter Recent visitors at Nieman headquarters ning team that produced the Pentagon with The Miami Herald, joined the staff of included: Yoichi Funabashi ('74) of Asahi Papers series for the Times in 1971. the Detroit Free Press in September as Shimbun; Michael Mcivor ('79) from CBC human services reporter. Her spouse, David Radio, Toronto; Richard Longworth ('69) Robinson, is the new executive sports edi­ with the Chicago Tribune; William Mon­ - 1977 - tor at the Free Press. talbano ('70) in the Buenos Aires bureau of The Los Angeles Times; Edwin Williams Renee and TONY CASTRO have an­ ('73) with the Charlotte Observer; Pam nounced the birth of their son, Trey An­ - 1985 - Spaulding ('85) from the Louisville Courier­ thony, on September 6, 1985. Castro is in Tournai; David Himmelstein ('83), a screen­ the Los Angeles office of Sports lllustrated. Nine of the twelve American Nieman writer who lives in Portland, Maine; and Fellows staged their own reunion in Wash­ Arun Chacko ('78) with World Report in ington, D.C., during the first weekend in New Delhi. - 1978 - November. The occasion marked Los An­ geles Times' ED CHEN's assignment for a DANNY SCHECHTER, a producer for short stint in the D.C. bureau. The festivi­ 20/20, has won for ABC News an Emmy ties, which included poker-playing and jol­ alking along the Florida beachfront for Outstanding Investigative Journalism ly mealtimes, were enjoyed by the follow­ W one hot evening, the scene was a (Segments) with the program "What Hap­ ing: PAM SPAULDING (Louisville Courier­ picture postcard cliche. To the right, the full pened to the Children?" The awards were Tournai), DOUG STANGLIN (US. News eJ moon shed a silver path along the calm given out in August at the National Televi­ World Report}, his spouse, Victoria Pope, water. To the left, the green fingers of palm sion Academy's News and Documentary CAROL RISSMAN (WBUR Radio, Boston), branches rustled endlessly. In the distance dinner in New York. PHIL HILTS (Washington Post), and his three or four other people were sauntering spouse Donna, JERRY EDDINGS, (Balti­ along. more Sun), LUCINDA FLEESON (Philadel­ Perfection seemed undisturbed by a - 1979 - phia Inquirer), DEBORAH JOHNSON small heap of curbside rubbish until sud­ (NBC News), JOEL KAPLAN (Nashville denly a cat-sized rat detached itself from KATHERINE (KAT) HARTING served as Tennessean), and, of course, Ed Chen. investigating the crumpled papers, paused, director of Television Training and Produc­ inspected the now-motionless strollers, and tion for the Macy Fellowships in Science then casually ambled across the dirt side­ Broadcast Journalism at WGBH, Boston's - 1986- walk to the nearby lawn, his long tail bend­ Public Broadcasting Service station. Most ing the grass behind him. recently Harting was senior producer in GUSTAVO GORRITI and his wife Esther On reflection, the incident could symbol­ preparation for two broadcasts of the New announce the birth of their daughter, Calia, ize good and evil, but let's settle instead for England Science Gazette. These half-hour on October 15. Born at Boston's Brigham a quick reminder of reality. magazine-format programs were aired in Hospital for Women, the infant weighed October and November, and portrayed the nine pounds. -T.B.K.L. work the Macy Fellows have done at WGBH. The Macy Fellowships will start their second year in January. The first half of the program is devoted to the study ofradio; the second half, to television. Philip Kuhn is Don't overlook the spring issue director of the fellowships. of Nieman Reports, featuring books, books, books. - 1983 -

CALLIE CROSSLEY is co-producer for one segment of a three-part six-hour docu­ mentary series titled Eyes on the Prize, a A good book is the best of friends, chronicle of the civil rights movement the same today and forever. from Emmet Till's death in 1954 to the -Martin Farquhar Tupper, 1810- 1889 signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Wintct 1 1 1 H~ II Second-class NIEMAN REPORTS postage paid at Boston, MA ONE FRANCIS AVENUE and additional CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02138 entries