Word: columnists
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...which they usually answer with rehearsed minispeeches that may have little relation to what was asked. The discussion of issues gets squashed into two-minute spiels and one-minute rebuttals that are wildly oversimplified at best and all too often downright misleading. In past campaigns, charges New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker, "nothing . . . has spread more misinformation, more false claims and more just outright mischaracterizations of things than those debates have...
...naturally aim to use the press without being burned by it, but never before have the marketers of candidates so successfully evaded real press scrutiny while staging controlled events that show their candidates to best advantage on television. The Reagan people have had four years of practice at it. Columnist James Reston of the New York Times, who has seen Presidents come and go (he is a few steps short of 75), ruefully describes them as "the best public relations team ever to enter the White House." They got away with cutting presidential press conferences to the fewest...
Network correspondents then troop triumphantly out on the White House lawn to mouth these comments as if they were repeating inside information instead of the daily Administration line. Washington's print journalists are a frustrated lot. Pooh-bah journalism is dead, and the role of the Washington columnist diminished, both having given way to television's visual immediacy...
...life and other constitutional issues. President Ford and advisers like retired General Brent Scowcroft argue that classified information on covert CIA activity in the mythical country of Sierra Madre must be kept secret from Congress and the public. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker disagree. The debate is familiar, but it gains discipline and clarity from the astute questioning of Moderator Benno Schmidt, dean of the Columbia Law School. Unfortunately, the hour shows are frequently over before the surface has been more than scratched: too many celebrity experts to hear from. Still...
...questions about as often as the heroine in Delacroix's painting. But such observations usually surfaced well into the evening broadcasts, and always after a somewhat breathless account of how the Reagan juggernaut continued to roll on, propelled by the president's charm and grace. As Mike Royko, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote in July; to win reelection, all Reagan need do is step on and off helicopters and offer his marine aides a Hollywood-honed salute...