Word: keogh
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...JAMES KEOGH, 56, chief of the White House research and writing staff in 1969-70, will succeed Frank Shakespeare as director of the U.S. Information Agency. A skilled newsman who was once executive editor of TIME, Keogh recently published President Nixon and the Press, a book highly critical of the major news-media treatment of the boss (TIME, April 17). Though propaganda as part of U.S. foreign policy has been toned down, Keogh says that the USIA job is more important than ever "now that we're moving from an era of military confrontation to an era of negotiation...
These questions are at the core of a new book, President Nixon and the Press (Funk & Wagnalls; $6.95). Author James Keogh, 55, a journalist and Nixon watcher of rich experience, wrote This Is Nixon in 1956. He was TIME'S executive editor before joining the Nixon campaign in 1968 and then for two years he was the White House assistant in charge of the research and writing staff. Afforded an excellent view of both sides of the fence, Keogh has written what amounts to the latest installment of the President's brief in the argument. In fact...
...Administration took office, Keogh reports, expecting an unfair shake, and Nixon himself warned his Cabinet appointees of the twisted coverage to come. As Keogh perceives it, those fears proved more than justified. He exempts some publications and individuals from criticism, such as U.S. News & World Report, FORTUNE, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, Columnists Max Lerner and Joseph and Stewart Alsop, NBC's Herbert Kaplow and ABC's Howard K. Smith. But he indicts big journalism generally-not for a liberal conspiracy, as some do, but for a "condition of conformity" that bends the news...
These he charges with down-playing stories favorable to the Administration and inflating negative news, with blind skepticism toward presidential policies and governmental authority generally. Nixon is not the only victim, Keogh argues. The public is led to believe that there exist simple solutions to serious problems if only the President would listen to Tom Wicker and Eric Sevareid. Blacks are told that they have an enemy in the White House. Youngsters become accustomed to hearing that troublemakers are admirable. "If the U.S. declines," Keogh concludes apocalyptically, "history will not let American journalism escape its large share of the responsibility...
...Some of Keogh's arguments hit home. Columnists Tom Braden and Frank Mankiewicz accused the Administration of retreating in the campaign against hunger; the same day the White House sent a message to Congress asking for an extra $1 billion for federal food-distribution programs. Marquis Childs mentioned that Nixon got his news daily from a one-page digest; the summary is always much longer, and on the day of the Childs column it was 51 pages...