“When Bill first spoke his dream out loud, his guidance counselors at school tried to discourage him, to break his spirit. Finally one of them took him aside and told him the facts of life: ‘Bill, you must accept the fact that it’s got nothing to do with your ability. It doesn’t matter how many points you score or how loud the cheers are. You can’t go to the top, because you are white.’ ”
As Jackson spoke this last, blunt word the audience of establishment Democrats went stone silent. The candidate had accomplished his dramatic objective. He was admitting that he faced tremendous odds in his campaign for president. But he was saying that the problem was not his radical positions or his devisive statements but his race, pure and simple.
It was a masterful bit of spin. The well-heeled crowd walked out of the Hilton that night thinking that Jackson had told a great joke with an ironic premise. But he had done more than that. He had laid the conceptual foundation for his second campaign for the presidency. Sure, he had a vulnerability as a candidate, but he, Jesse Jackson, could not be blamed for that vulnerability.
Beneath the applause and the lingering titters, there was a guilty suspicion that the candidate was right.
12
* * *
“The Press Is the Enemy”
I’ve been right and I’ve been paranoid, and it’s better being paranoid.
—William Safire
In the fall of 1991, Bill Clinton and Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey were killing time before their speeches at a New Hampshire Democratic fund-raiser. Each was trying to top the other with his latest over-the-top joke. Kerrey, a much-decorated disabled Vietnam War veteran, told one about their common rival, Jerry Brown, who during two terms as California governor had earned a reputation for having lost touch with the regular folk.
The joke had Brown entering a saloon and noticing a pair of attractive women sitting at the bar. As the newcomer began to approach the two, the bartender warned him not to bother. The two, he assured Brown, were lesbians. The rest of the joke is not as important as the rest of this story. It turned out that a C-Span microphone was picking up Kerrey’s every word.
Alerted to the story, and assuming it was just a matter of time before C-Span released the tape, I confirmed the story and got it in the last edition of the next day’s San Francisco Examiner.
What I didn’t print, because I didn’t know it, was that both candidates, Clinton as well as Kerrey, were telling such jokes that evening. To his lasting credit, Kerrey would keep that fact forever to himself even as his press secretary, Mike McCurry, tried desperately to have him go public. McCurry’s future boss, Bill Clinton, let his rival twist slowly in the wind for having told a “lesbian” joke, never saying a word about his own role.
The incident, which told less about the man from Nebraska than it would later about the guy from Arkansas, helped destroy the Kerrey campaign, especially after the Clinton campaign described it as “tasteless.”
Never forget that reporters serve their apprenticeships on the night desk. When a grisly murder or auto accident occurs, it is the cub reporter, the peachy keen Jimmy Olsen type, who drives out to the house of the freshly deceased to ask for a “recent picture” and, having made the loathsome request, stands nonchalantly in the hallway while the bereaved roots through the family albums.
The first thing to keep in mind about members of the Fourth Estate is that the people you are dealing with have passed through this journalistic boot camp. The freshly scrubbed reporters who came back with the snapshot are the hungry ones—the ones who move on to cover the living.
If that seems less than charitable, so be it. This book is not written for journalism students but for those who have to deal with them once they reach the streets.
You may be one of those cocky types who watch some business guy getting fried to a crisp on 60 Minutes and wonder why anyone with a brain larger than a moth’s would consent to be interviewed. How could someone smart enough to run a business or even a middle-sized scam still fall for such a setup? My reaction is more sympathetic. How many rolls of tape must the producers waste, I ask myself, how many softballs must be thrown, how many hours of amiable schmoozing with the victim’s newfound friend Mike or Ed or Diane must be endured to warm the stooge up before letting loose with the zinger?
Fact: the higher you go in business, the more time you will spend standing blindfolded on the media firing line. You will get a taste of what politicians must endure every day of their working lives.
Pols have something to teach in this regard. As a group they may be dismissed as publicity seekers; the good ones never forget that careers can be broken more easily than made by the press. As we saw in an earlier chapter, “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy became a modern American demagogue playing to the hour-by-hour habits and competitive job pressures of the Capitol Hill reporter. Ronald Reagan, too, has made masterly use of the media. But, as witnessed on many an evening news program, Reagan also knew the iron rule “Only talk when it improves the silence.” Striding cinematically across the South Lawn, he passed harmlessly by a whole cowpen of TV reporters and cameramen. Smiling jauntily, his hand cupped to his good ear, he strained to hear the distant shouted questions. As the mad whirl of the helicopter blades grew deafening, he shook his head, lipsynched a “Sorry, fellas” for cameras and swaggered his way aboard Marine One, off to Camp David or Santa Barbara, well out of harm’s way.
Many people reach a level of professional or corporate responsibility where it becomes their interest to meet the press, but not everyone can tote a helicopter around to provide the foil for such easy getaways. It is here that they should remember the somewhat hyperbolic but useful rule made famous by Richard Nixon: The press is the enemy.
This may seem harsh to some, and so to those gentler ears let me put the admonition more mildly: Always remember what these people do for a living. Their mission is to produce a good story, and in their business it’s generally the bad news that makes the best headlines. Failure, misery, disaster—that’s what makes the bells go off in a journalist’s nervous system: the kind of story where somebody gets hurt.
Consider this gallery of horrors:
In July 1986, White House chief of staff Donald Regan was briefing the press on the Administration’s South African policy, a touchy subject. For months the Administration had defied the pressure from Congress and the public and stubbornly fought economic sanctions against Pretoria. Regan tried to send a message about the various unexplored consequences to our own country of such an embargo. “Are the women of America,” he asked, “prepared to give up all their jewelry?”
Don Regan is no fool. He was speaking rhetorically of the unpublicized economic consequences of an embargo. Furthermore, the press session was conducted under strict ground rules. The White House staff briefing was explicitly billed as “on background.” Reporters who attended could attribute remarks in general references—to “Administration officials,” for example—but not to Mr. Regan personally.
Unfortunately for the man from Merrill Lynch, such ground rules are not written in cement. There are loopholes, exceptional cases in which no matter what guidelines have been set, a reporter may claim the right to ignore them.
The morning following the briefing, Los Angeles Times reporter Karen Tumulty came up to my desk in the giant Speaker’s rooms of the Capitol, read me the Regan quote from a United Press International account and said that, based on a later reference in the story, everyone had a pretty good idea which “high Administration official” had said it. Recognizing the men’s-locker-room idiom favored by the Chief of Staff, I said, “That sounds like Diamond Don Regan.”
There was blood in the water. Helen Thomas, the veteran UPI correspondent, soon changed her attribution from “high Administration” to “Don Regan.” There was no point in maintaining a technical compliance with the ground rules, particularly on the part of a reporter who had not attended the briefing.
The sobriquet “Diamond Don” became a crown of thorns
for the man who had been acting for months as a kind of American prime minister. Charges of sexism and racial insensitivity were only the beginning. Garry Trudeau’s comic strip, Doonesbury, made Diamond Don a featured character.
How could a shrewd businessman like Don Regan expose himself to such ridicule? There are a number of explanations. One, the press that covered Wall Street, particularly in Regan’s high-flying days, was far more deferential than those who chronicle the daily foibles of public officials. Two, the reporter who broke the story had not attended Regan’s South Africa briefing and was therefore not bound by the ground rules. She had simply heard about the briefing, knew who conducted it and read what was said. The ground rules could have been discarded for another reason as well: at the personal judgment by any reporter present that the remarks on women’s concern for “their jewelry” were grossly sexist. Many reporters simply do not honor “on background” protection in such cases.
No matter how intricate or sophisticated the ground rules you establish with a reporter, they apply only as long as it accords with both parties’ mutual interest. There is no law that says journalists need to honor the deal with a source. If the story is hot enough, ways can be found to get around any agreement. A reporter can often find an alternative source for information given to him or her off the record. “If it’s on the record,” senior Senate aide Sven Holmes, a veteran of many Democratic campaigns, has noted, “it will appear the next day. If it’s off the record, it’ll run the next week.”
For anyone who doubts this, think of all the times you have heard a distraught public figure try to defend himself for an ill-considered public comment by saying, “But that was off the record.” Claiming “off the record” is like a defendant in a larceny case claiming entrapment. To the layman, both come across as admissions of guilt. Translation: Okay, so I said it. I didn’t think it would ever make it into print.
No party has a monopoly on bloopers.
The week before Gary Hart announced for president in 1986, a key aide was quoted in Newsweek on his candidate’s private life: “He’s always in jeopardy of having the sex issue raised if he can’t keep his pants on.”
When the aide called Colorado in an attempt to explain his remark to the campaigning Harts, the candidate’s wife was overheard saying, “Tell him to save his dime.” The following week, Newsweek carried a letter from the unhappy man, under the headline “A Clarification on Hart.” The aide began by saying that he had understood the pain-causing interview to be off the record. “The particular quote attributed to me was made in a speculative and purely hypothetical context,” he continued, “contrary to the actual facts as I know them.” The damage had been done, to the candidate and to the relationship. Far worse damage would be done, of course, when the candidate was found in the same compromising position his aide had feared.
To sum up, there are only two kinds of media-wise politicians: those who are born fearing the press—who keep their distance from day one—and those who learn to fear it the hard way.
One more for the books: the great burlesque tale of “How Earl Became the Butz of his Own Joke.”
In the days just after the 1976 Republican national convention, President Ford’s Agriculture Secretary was flying westward to visit a screwworm-eradication plant in Mexico, which in hindsight seems a grotesquely appropriate destination. Riding in the first-class compartment of a commercial airline, Earl Butz spotted singers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono. With them was John Dean, the former White House counsel and Watergate whistle-blower, in his most recent incarnation: as a reporter back from covering the Republican convention for Rolling Stone.
After some introductory towel-snapping, the conversation turned to politics, and Pat Boone asked the Secretary of Agriculture why so few blacks were drawn to the Republican Party.
Butz replied, “The only things that coloreds are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes and a warm place to shit.”
Dean obviously shared Butz’s sense that it was too good a line to be wasted. He included it in his article for Rolling Stone, attributing it to a “member of the Ford cabinet.” Dean’s story mentioned that the barnyard slur was made on a plane heading west following Ford’s nomination, and by elimination New Times, a competing magazine, nailed Butz as the flying Cabinet comedian. You have to wonder what inner demon had lulled him into telling a racist joke in the presence of an aspiring political journalist who three years earlier had sold out his president.
Unfortunately, anyone involved in press relations must, to use the phrase made famous by Hollywood publicity man Henry Rogers, “walk the tightrope.” You must be bold and dramatic enough to get your message across—always in competition with millions of others—without plunging to your death.
To protect yourself, here are a handful of terms that might keep you balanced:
When you speak on “background,” that means the reporter cannot quote you by name. But it does not constrain him or her from describing you in such a way—“a key aide to the Speaker” or “someone who works closely with the plant manager”—as to cause almost as much trouble as your name itself.
“Deep background” applies when you want the reporter to publish or broadcast the information, but not attributed in any way that could even vaguely identify you. Such was the agreement Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward made with their Watergate source “Deep Throat.” When you read a story that includes the phrase “sources said,” you know you’re reading a story put out on deep background.
“Off the record” means that the reporter cannot use the information. It can do handstands in a reporter’s head; it can be indispensable in making sense of other matters; it may govern the tone in which crucial issues are reported; but it can’t appear in print.
None of these ground rules should ever be presumed. Reporters are not required to read you your Miranda rights. They don’t have to tell you that you are on the record. That’s the assumption.
Being conversant with the various types of ground rules is hardly enough. You need to use them explicitly. Politicians and their spokesmen, anyone who works regularly with the press, must develop for their own survival a mental set of stoppers that will force them to say, “Now, this is on background, okay?” “Now, I don’t want this identified as a ‘Democratic aide,’ ‘leadership aide’ or anything like that, okay?”
Never forget, in using such lingo you are always treading the edge of disaster. Ground rules are made by the players and for the players. If you enjoy a relationship of ongoing trust with journalists, these ground rules can benefit both of you. A good reporter will respect such arrangements, not just for ethical reasons but because he or she doesn’t want to dry up a good source or gain a bad reputation.
But the minute one side doesn’t want to play that way anymore, he or she can simply end the game. Reporters may use what they have available at any moment, out of a ruthless calculation that what has been obtained from you is more important than anything you might provide in the future. You should be particularly fearful of any reporter who urges you to tell him something off the record. If he cannot use the information, why does he want it?
The best rule to remember here is this: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. If having your words appear in The Wall Street Journal could cost you your job, it is foolhardy to go “on background.” If the downside is simply a bad day or two at the office, and you trust the reporter to stick to the ground rules, why not? Life is short. Have some fun.
But it’s a good idea to keep your wits about you even when dealing with genuinely good friends in the press. Like policemen, they are always on duty. This goes double for “social occasions.” Anything you say after a few drinks is as good as something you said during the press briefing or on the subway on the way to work. As White House press aide Larry Speakes once told his troops, “You may get a free dinner tonight, but you will regret it in the morning.”
Even under the tightest ground rules, some things you tell the pre
ss will always be fair game. One category includes anything that might be even broadly taken as an ethnic slur.
As some will remember, in 1984 Jesse Jackson, candidate for president, had a casual conversation with a group of black reporters in which he referred to Jews and New York City as “Hymie” and “Hymietown.” The next weekend, The Washington Post broke this in a major story. Jackson’s defense was that he had premised his remarks by saying, “Let’s talk black talk.” But his claim to privacy is disqualified on two accounts: one, he failed to get an explicit off-the-record agreement from the reporters; two, his remarks fit into the category of ethnic slurs. Many reporters simply consider such comments an abuse of their confidence.
Like it or not, we live in the “Gotcha!” era of journalism. If a reporter can nail you in the process of nailing down his story, he will.
These are tough challenges for those who have to make their living in press relations. Stories need to be interesting, but not too interesting. I know all too well the sound of The Washington Post and The New York Times hitting the lawn after a sleepless night spent wondering whether I had gone far enough to get quoted but not far enough to get burned. “I have been right and I have been paranoid,” former Nixon aide and now columnist William Safire once said, “and it’s better being paranoid.”
In 1973 I was congressional correspondent for a small news service in Washington underwritten by Ralph Nader. Nixon had just carried out the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and Woodward and Bernstein were blazing hot. “Investigative” journalism was coming into fashion. Everyone was digging for the next big story of evil, corruption or anything that would embarrass the powerful. I remember trying to file my story one night as Peter Gruenstein, the bureau chief, paced through the office smoking a cigar and repeating over and over, “Dirt. We’ve got to find some dirt.” When I wrote a standard, informative news story, it was dismissed as routine. “Press-release stuff,” Gruenstein would grumble.
Chris Matthews Complete Library E-book Box Set: Tip and the Gipper, Jack Kennedy, Hardball, Kennedy & Nixon, Now, Let Me Tell You What I Really Think, and American Page 104
