Word: press
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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White, who returned to London last year after 27 years of TIME assignments in half a dozen capitals, found that British campaigns had hardly changed since he covered them for the Associated Press. White was with Foreign Secretary David Owen when that Labor candidate for a parliamentary seat in Plymouth, Devon, pumped constituents' hands on the historic quay where, on Sept. 6, 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World. Owen, reports White, drew fewer bystanders than did the nearby Mayflower memorial plaque. "After all," says White, "it's the tourist season here...
Walking across the street toward his Tuesday press conference, Jimmy Carter listened intently as Jody Powell confirmed the taunting charges Ted Kennedy had made only a few hours earlier in New York City. Powell had just called Kennedy's office himself to check the exact words. Yes, the press secretary told the President, Kennedy had said the oil lobby intimidated Carter into "throwing in the towel" on decontrol without even "entering the ring." Yes, Kennedy had accused Carter of submitting a token windfall profits tax that was no more than a "transparent fig leaf over vast new corporate profits...
Carter was steaming. Kennedy's criticisms were usually much more carefully phrased. The President looked at Powell and brusquely said that was a lot of baloney. A few minutes later, to Powell's surprise, Carter repeated the same comment to the press corps. Thus began the great fig leaf and baloney...
...when the Los Angeles Times finally gave Nixon "fair" coverage in the 1962 California governor's race, asked tough questions, allowed his opponent equal space. Nixon would break down and reveal his paranoia. So Halberstam completely distorts the famous "you won't have Nixon to kick around any more" press conference after Nixon lost that race. Quoting only one Nixon sentence, Halberstam claims that Nixon completely lost control and launched into a screed against the press. Aha! the reader is supposed to say, the L.A. Times was the heart of darkness behind Agnew, the secret bombings of Cambodia, Watergate...
Garry Wills's Nixon Agonistes, however, gives the opposite interpretation and backs it up with several pages of the press conference transcripts. Wills points out that Nixon lashed out and backed off, lashed out and backed off, on the edge but never breaking, always hedging his bets. Wills notes that when Larry O'Brien in 1968 screened the film of the press conference, hoping to find a segment to use in Humphrey commercials, O'Brien came up with nothing, so thoroughly had Nixon covered...