Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Agnew again zeroed in on a worthwhile subject when he turned to the diminishing newspaper competition in many American cities. With so many newspapers dying, he said, many of the survivors have "grown fat and irresponsible." True enough, although the New York Times is not a convincing example. It may be true that the Times would be still better if it had more competition; but most professionals would disagree with Agnew's claim that the Times has got worse since the death of other New York papers...
Jefferson, Jackson. At one point Agnew declared: "The day when [newsmen] enjoyed a form of diplomatic immunity from comment and criticism of what they said is over." But as James Reston asked in his New York Times column the next morning, when did that day ever dawn? Among some famous old snipes at the press noted by Reston: Thomas Jefferson writing in 1803 that "even the least informed of the people have learnt that nothing in a newspaper is to be believed"; and Andrew Jackson strafing in 1837 some editors "who appear to fatten on slandering their neighbors and hire...
...Agnew's views continued to draw considerable sympathy. The San Francisco Examiner editorialized: "It's high time somebody else started getting headlines besides the yippies, bomb-throwers and the disruptive critics of every traditional American value." Vermont Royster, editor of the Wall Street Journal, bemoaned the fact that Agnew had drawn no praise for being in the company of critics like Jefferson, and added: "All of which leads to the melancholy conclusion that the press can dish it out but quivers when it's dished back...
...quivering. Norman Isaacs, executive editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, fumed: "What we're facing now is a drive for a real one-party press, not through free expression but through open intimidation by the top officials of our Government." The Chicago Sun-Times said Agnew's attitude recalled a 1920 quote by Lenin: "Why should a government that is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal than guns." To suggest even remotely that the Nixon Administration takes...
Bold, not Bland. In television it can be argued that far from being too opinionated, news is not opinionated and hard-hitting enough. Among the more thought-provoking responses to Agnew was a speech by Fred Friendly to the California Institute of Technology. Urging "bolder, not blander illumination" of issues on television, Friendly recalled regretfully that when he was president of CBS News in 1964, he decided against analysis of President Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin speech. Edward R. Murrow, for one, immediately phoned Friendly to deplore the omission. "I shall always believe," Friendly said last week, "that...