Newshawk's Note: Ben Bagdikian is a throwback to the old days. His analysis
of changes in the way news is reported is very pertinent to MAP's function
of trying to understand and influence the news, even though it doesn't
pertain directly to drug issues.

OH, WHAT A MESS WE'RE IN

Reporting warped by sex., television and trivialities

THE SPECTACLE of hostile prosecutors forcing the president of the United
States to re real intimate details of his sex life would n't have taken
place when I was a Washington correspondent, 35 years ago. I hink it was
better back then for the country, and for journalism.

A lot of people, journalists included, knew that Dwight Eisenhower had had
an affair with his aide, Kay Summersby, when he was supreme commander in
Europe. No correspondent reported that when he ran for president.

In the 1960s, many of us knew that President Kennedy had, serial bed mates,
but we didn't report it. President Johnson was a groper and some of the
gropees boasted to correspondent, but we didn't report that, either.

Were journalists more noble and less sullied by prurient thoughts back
then? Were we less interested in competing with our peers? Did we
righteously refuse to accept leaked information? Of course not. It's not
journalists who have changed but rather the nation's adoption of more open
sexual mores and its reliance on television for news.

These trends have played out against the background of our society's
historic conflict between n public puritanism and private sex lives,
between Cotton Mather and Masters and Johnson.

The private sex and marital lives of American presidents didn't have much
historic significance until recently. In 1952, probably no one could have
beaten Eisenhower, but the fact that his opponent, Adlai Stevenson, had
been divorced was still considered a drag on his candidacy.

Adding to this was a new concern with private medical histories. In 1955,
President Eisenhower had a coronary thrombosis in Denver but went on to win
re-election in 1956. In 1972, Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton had to
drop out of the presidential race because it was learned he had once
undergone shock treatment for depression. These cases made the health of
presidential candidates an issue, deepening public interest in their
private lives.

As television became the primary engine of political campaigns, political
managers began to fear uncontrolled TV appearances.

Eisenhower's first spontaneous press conference as a candidate was a disaster.

>From then on, his managers fine-tuned appearances ahead of time. John
Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon in 1960 was due in part to the live TV
debate in which Nixon's heavy 5 o'clock shadow and his unattractive
defensive shoulder hunch gave him a bad image. (Interestingly, although a
majority of thosc who watched on TV thought Kennedy had won, those who
listened on radio picked Nixon as the winner.)

Campaign managers came to fear spontaneous appearances. Over time, this led
to campaigns built on meticulously rehearsed and restaged taped political
TV spots saying more about the person and less about the person's issues
and past voting record.

Social changes had their impact. In the 1960s, the counterculture rebelled
against our historic puritanism about sex. In the 1970s, the women's
movement incorporated sexual liberation into women's liberation, which also
meant no more tolerance for sexual pressure on women by male authority
figures.

At the same time, television was evolving from a few channels showing the
likes of Howdy Doody and Huntley and Brinkley into the present
multiplication of TV and cable channels. This, in turn, has meant more
competitive sex and violence scenes shown almost hourly.

As television competition increased, so did the competition for Washington
news. Today, there are three times as many accredited newspeople and news
services in the capital as there were when John Kennedy took office.
Competition, and its paradoxical partner, the journalistic herd instinct,
is that much more frenzied.

Washington reporters need dramatic items. TV news shows are expected to be
profitable and fast, favoring quick "gotcha" reports. The news is not what
a public figure says but rather the speculation about his secret reasons
for saying it.

And where are we? The country faces the possible impeachment of its
president because of his private sex in the White House.

Meanwhile, Russia is falling apart, India and Pakistan have exploded
nuclear devices. Crashed Asian economies threaten the health of our own. A
third of our school houses are in various stages of falling apart. And the
gap between the very rich and the non-rich continues. But tune in at 11 for
the latest public-figure sex scandal.

That's why I think it was better in the 1960s, when Washington
correspondents left the private sex of politicians in the bedroom and off
the front pages and TV screens.

Ben Bogdikion is a former Washington correspondent and editor and former
dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski