Word: caterer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Marshall Plan. But there are issues--such as the discussion of "permissible levels" of Strontium 90--where reporters digging for the facts and not just for a story perform a considerable service, and there are even times when the President can use his press conference to great effect (though Cater argues that this American "Question Period" has fallen on very hard times...
...Cater stresses, however, that the news which is manufactured by a planned leak, by a timed press release, by a publicity-conscious Senator, by a harried President at press conference time, or by a Congressional investigation aimed at headline capturing is not necessarily the news which the public needs to know. Operating under the pressure to get a story which will sell papers, and under the realization that he lacks the sophistication to handle complicated scientific, diplomatic and economic decisions, the Washington reporter cannot fulfill, Cater maintains, his ideal role as public informant...
...highly readable, well documented and thoroughly logical words Cater makes a very impressive case against believing everything you read in the newspapers. Some of it is put there because a reporter needs a story. Some of it gets in because a Washington policy-maker is having a quarrel and needs public support (but the other side of the argument may not make the story.) A great deal of it gets in because of the constant competition for public attention in Washington...
...critique, not a cure. The author argues that the old rule of objectivity has long since become a dead letter and would not be viable even if it could be revived. Nor is the shibboleth of "equal time, equal space" for conflicting views an adequate yardstick. What Cater asks is greater awareness within the press corps of the enormous power it holds and of the manifold ways in which that power and its holders can be used. The mechanical pitfalls in the way of commuting the "truth" from Washington to the reader who moves his lips can only...
Frequently the authors hold up a little flag bearing the legend: "See, we can underestimate dangers and be optimistic, too." But recurrently they hark back to a theme which Douglass Cater recorded as part of a 1946 address by Joseph Alsop to the Signet Society. At that time, "the older member of the partnership" as he styles himself, compared the nations of the West to Leonidas' troops at Thermopylae and suggested that they "comb their golden hair in the sunlight and prepare to die bravely." A little bit of this sort of Everett Dirksen brand eloquence goes an awfully long...