Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ACCIDENT. Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay, and Joseph Losey directed this glacial dissection of human passion against the background of an Oxonian summer...
...side in shops and offices. Wall posters criticize laggard factory managers and party officials, women's high heels and short dresses, and everyone who dodges early-morning gymnasium classes. Like a propaganda tableau out of Red China, party members and intellectuals gather in the fields against a majestic background of snow-capped mountains, reading Hoxha's thoughts to the toiling farmers and spurring them on to greater productivity. Other workers trudge along country roads to rifle practice with flowers sticking out of the muzzles of their guns...
...Bradlee laid down some guidelines: "First, we encourage every reporter to fight like hell to get it on the record. Second, he should insist that the absolute minimum he'll take is attribution to the Government agency involved. Third, he should say in the story why it is background news. Finally, the reporter is free, at his discretion, to get up and leave a background session...
...that remained was to try out the new rules. An opportunity arose at a White House press conference. After discussing the President's views on the Common Market, Negotiator Bill Roth announced that the session was for "background only." Washington Post Reporter Carroll Kilpatrick asked why. "It's background information," said Press Secretary George Christian. "I'm sorry," Timesman Max Frankel broke in, "but if you're going to give me information on that basis, I'm authorized by my editors to say that the White House has no comment on this." So threatened, Roth...
...week later, Post Reporter Eric Wentworth tested the same technique at a conference called by Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman. When Freeman said that his discussion of the Kennedy Round of tariff negotiations was for background only, Wentworth rose and replied: "I'm sorry, Mr. Secretary, but it's not the policy of our paper to attend background briefings." Freeman was visibly startled, but he refused to budge. "I'll withdraw," said Wentworth, and did. While other papers carried full reports of the conference, attributing it to a vague source, the Post ran nothing. Said Bradlee philosophically...