Reed Irvine - Editor
Janet Cooke demonstrated with her story about Jimmy, the non-existent eight-year-old heroin addict, that the editors of The Washington Post are more interested in sensation than in accuracy. Miss Cooke sensed that the key to success at The Post was to produce a story that would send shockwaves through the community, if not the nation. It didn't matter if it was true or not. Janet Cooke pulled it off beautifully. She produced a sensational story that resulted in the Washington police department's sending officers out to examine the arms of all the young boys in the Anacostia section of the city to find the young addict whose identity The Post refused to disclose. Her story won a Pulitzer prize. It was only after the Associated Press discovered that Miss Cooke had lied about her academic credentials that the editors of The Post investigated and found that she had also lied about Jimmy. The police couldn't find him because be didn't exist.
Janet Cooke was the only person to be fired as a result of that scandal. The editors who had shown that they valued sensation above accuracy stayed on. They are continuing to tolerate "Cookeism," the cooking up of non-existent scandals by imaginative reporting that has little or no relationship to the facts. Since mid-December 1982, The Washington Post has stirred up three such scandals. The stories were not complete fiction, as was Janet Cooke's story about little Jimmy. They were worse than fiction, since they misrepresented the actions of real people.
The first attack was on the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation and the president of the corporation in mid-December. Post reporter Mary Thornton had all of Washington convinced that the Reagan appointees to the board were ripping off the taxpayers by charging outrageous fees and billing for outlandish expenses. They were also supplied to have approved an excessively generous contract for the president of the corporation. The Post's stories failed to report the following relevant facts: (1) There was nothing new about the payment of consultant fees and expenses to the members of the board of the Legal Services Corporation; this had been the practice since the board was set up in 1975. (2) The Reagan appointees had been informed by the outgoing president, a Carter appointee, that they could charge consulting fees to cover travel time and time spent preparing for board meetings at the rate of $221 per day, the rate set by Congress. (3)The Reagan-appointed board had met 98 times during the first 11 months of 1982, with the average cost of consulting fees and expenses billed per board meeting amounting to $6,464. The previous year the Carter-appointed board had met 12 times, and the average cost of consulting fees and expenses billed per meeting was $8,341. (4) The Post had singled out the board chairman, Mr. William F. Harvey, for having billed a total of $33,810 in fees and expenses, but it never mentioned that the second highest billing was by Josephine Worthy, who collected $33,794, only $16 less than Mr. Harvey. Josephine Worthy had been appointed to the board by President Carter as the representative of the poor. Reporter Mary Thornton said she had not mentioned Mrs. Worthy because she was a Cafier appointee and because her term had expired in the fall!
The same series of stories charged that the Legal Services Corporation Board had given the new president of the corporation, Mr. Donald Bogard, a contract that provided unprecedented benefits. Chief among these were payment for membership in a private club of his choice and a year's severance pay if Mr. Bogard's employment was terminated during his first year in office. The contract also provided for travel expenses pending Mr. Bogard's permanent settlement in Washington to enable him to make frequent trips home to see his family.
The contract given to Mr. Bogard was almost identical to those given to his predecessors. Mr. Bogard was given the promise of a year's severance pay during his first year rather than six months, which was standard. because the board could not give assurance that his appointment would not be reversed as a result of either a pending court case or a sweeping change in the composition of the board itself. The Reagan appointees to the board had not been confirmed by the Senate. and there was a question as to whether they would be confirmed. The membership in the private club had been a standard provision in previous contracts, but Mr. Bogard said he had not requested it and had no intention of joining any private club in Washington.
The highly selective reporting of the facts in these cases by The Washington Past created a furor, complete with editorial denunciations, angry columns and vicious cartoons depicting the members of the Legal Services Board as greedy bogs. The Post eventually published a column by James J. Kilpatrick and a letter from board chairman William F. Harvey correcting the false impressions given by the news stories, but on January 2, 1983, it also ran a lengthy story by one of its top reporters, Robert F. Kaiser, titled "The Dubious Deals of Reagan'e Crowd," in which the fees and expenses paid to Mr. Harvey were again singled out as one of those "dubious deals." Ten days later, The Post published a story by Mary Thornton reporting that an investigation by the Office of Management and Budget had found no violations of any rules or laws with respect to the fees and expenses collected by the Legal Services Corpora- tion Board members. It also found nothing wrong with Mr. Bogard's contract.
On December 18, 19, and 25, 1982, The Washington Post ran articles about Interstate Commerce Commission member, Fred Andre, suggesting that remarks he had made at a closed ICC meeting on October 20 indicated that he was defending bribery. These stories led to demands for Mr. Andre's resignation.
The Poet failed to report Mr. Andre's statements fully and accurately. The transcript of the meeting of October 20 makes it clear that Mr. Andre was not defending bribes and kickbacks in the ordinary sense of the tenon, e.g., payments to an employee of a firm to divert business to the provider of a product or service. Mr. Andre agreed that such payments were wrong and should be prosecuted. He argued that truckers who discount the cost of their service, offering lower rates than those set by the government, ought not to be put in that same category. Mr. Andre does not believe that the government should he setting minimum prices for the industry, and he suggested that the ICC consider recommending to Congress legislation that would make such discounting legal. This is not a defense of bribery, as it was portrayed by The Post. The Post seemed more interested in creating a scandal than in accurately reporting Mr. Andre's views on deregulation of the trucking industry. On January 10, The Post published a letter from Mr. Andre setting the record straight.
The Canadian Propaganda Film Flap
The most recent example of the propensity of The Washington Post to go for the scandal instead of the facts appeared on February 25, 1983. The Post stirred up a storm with a front-page story headlined. "U.S. Labels Three Films Propaganda." The films. two about acid rain and the third about nuclear war, had been produced or distributed by the National Film Board of Canada, an agency of the Canadian government. The Film Board has been registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent since 1947.
Attorneys for the Justice Department made a routine determination last year that the three films in question were propaganda as defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They were clearly designed to influence public opinion on controversial political issues. As required by law, the Justice Department notified the Canadian Film Board that it would have to incorporate into each of the films a notice stating that it was produced or distributed by a registered foreign agent whose reports were on file with the Justice Department. Those reports were to include the names of the TV stations, theaters or organizations that had used the films, the dates of showings, and the estimated size of the audiences.
This was done pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which was first passed in the Roosevelt administration in 1938. The purpose was to combat deception of the public by Nazi propagandists. The law applies to printed material as well as to films. The Washington Post itself has carried many an ad bearing the notification to the readers that the ad was placed by a registered foreign agent whose reports were on file with the Justice Department. It has never been known to protest this requirement.
But readers of The Post's news stories about the routine action by the Justice Department in notifying the Canadians that three of their films had to hear the registration notification were given the impression that the Reagan administration had suddenly launched a new and ominous attack on freedom of speech. The lead of the Post story by Tess Peterson said: "The Justice Department has decided that three Canadian films, including a documentary on nuclear war that has been nominated for an Academy Award, are 'political propaganda' and may not be shown in the United States without a disclaimer stating that the U.S. government does not approve of them."
That is not what the required disclaimer says. It reads as follows: "This material is prepared, edited, issued or circulated by which is registered wit h the Department of Justice under t he Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of Dissemination reports on this film are filed with the Department of Justice, where the required registration statement is available for public inspection. Registration does not indicate approval of the contents of this material by the United States Government."
The Washington Post deliberately altered the statement that "registration does not indicate approval of the contents" to "the U.S. government does not approve of them." It isn't that the reporter didn't know better. She had available to her a UPI story that quoted the disclaimer correctly.
The Washington Post did not tell its readers when the Foreign Agents Registration Act was passed, how long the Canadian Film Board had been registered as an agent, nor what the purpose of the law is. Most of the story was devoted to a description of the films and to statements critical of the Justice Department action. The first reaction reported was this: "The decision has created a furor in Canada, where officials called it a throwback to :he McCarthy era and an 'extraordinary interference with freedom of speech.'"
The story then went on to say, "Environmentalists in this country accused the government of attempting to suppress in formation on the politically sensitive subject of acid rain. and the West Coast distributor of the nuclear war film called it a 'chilling' and 'scary' decision that will require him to turn over the names and addresses of every librarian, teacher or civic club officer who rents the film." It also quoted the Canadian Minister of Environment as saying, "It sounds like something you would expect from the Soviet Union, not the United States,"
All of this frightening comment would have looked even sillier if it had been made clear that the registration requirement has been enforced for years. The Post disposed of that problem by saying of Justice Department spokesman John Russell that "he was told that the action was 'not unique,' but he said he'd never heard of its being done before." All that meant was that Mr. Russell, who handles press inquiries for Justice on a variety of matters, could not immediately provide The Washington Post off the top of his head with examples of other foreign films that had been required to carry the registration notification.
The Washington Post could easily have gotten such a list if it had been interested in doing so. The Justice Department issued a statement the following day in which it pointed out that its Foreign Agents Registration Act unit reviews a minimum of 25 films a year and that about half of them are found to require the disclosure. The Department cited three additional films that had fallen into that category last year. One was from Israel, "Conversation with Golda Meir.' Another was from Berlin and a third from Canada. A week later, the Department issued a list of 23 films that had been required to carry the disclosure in the last two years. These included eight from Israel, three from the Republic of Korea, four from South Africa, and six 'IV tapes from Japan.
The Canadian film flap is a classic example of how a single distorted story can send waves of misunderstanding throughout the media, Cass Peterson followed up her first misleading story with a second one designed to keep the "scandal" boiling. The Post put this one at the top of page 2 on February 26, It reported that Canada had "asked the State Department to reverse the Justice Department's decision to label three Canadian films as 'political propaganda.'" It reported that a storm had blown up on Capitol Hill over the matter and that the American Civil Liberties Union was going to challenge the action in court, The story quoted Senator Edward Kennedy as saying. "It is one thing for the right wing to say 'Let Reagan be Reagan.' but it is a very different thing for them to say 'Let Reagan be Orwell.'"
In the 17th paragraph of this 20-paragraph story, Peterson got around to revealing how routine the Justice Department action was reporting that Justice had said that it imposes the disclosure requirement on about half of the 25 films it reviews each year. Ms. Peterson sought to impugn the accuracy of that statement by adding, "Film distributors and AGLU attorneys, however, said they were aware of only one similar case, an unsuccessful attempt in the mid-1970s to impose some restrictions on the showing of Cuban films." When the Justice Department subsequently issued its list of 23 films and tapes that had been required to carry the disclosure statement over the last two years, The Washington Post failed to report the information.
On February 27, The Post's lead editorial described as "unfortunate" the decision by the Justice Department "to label three Canadian documentary films 'political propaganda,'" It asked. "What is so threatening about these documentaries that they must be labeled and shown only with a disclaimer that the U. S, government does not approve of them?" The editorial writer was apparently laboring under the impression created by Cass Peterson's story that the films actually had to bear the label "political propaganda" and the statement that "the U.S. government does not approve of this film." The editorial writer also seemed to be under the misapprehension that the Justice Department required lists to be submitted of everyone who had viewed the films. when all that is required is the name of the stations, organizations. or theaters using the films, The editorial said. "But labeling films as 'propaganda' and keeping lists of viewers are disturbing and intimidating practices." It suggested that the law ought to be changed.
The Post's cartoonist, Herblock, weighed in with an equally misinformed cartoon showing the "Dept. of Justice Propaganda Squad" as Keystone Cops raiding "Canadian Govt. Movies on Acid Rain." The same day, Mary McGrory's column in The Post and other papers throughout the country talked about Senator Kennedy's "ringing denunciation of the president's Orwellian conduct." McCrory threw in the ridiculous statement that "those who see (the films) may also be reported to the attorney general." McCrory concluded with the assertion that "the Justice Department wizards figured out that President Reagnn's principal political problems are the scandal at the EPA and the nuclear freeze movement, and reasoned from that that the thing to do was to keep quiet about them. So they have said that it is un-American to be against nuclear war and acid Fain. It's an odd message at this time, but Reagan is letting it stand." Thus a routine action by a non-political civil servant at the Justice Department administering a long- standing law is reported as an act of high political strategy by the Reagan administration.
Behind all the shouting lies an assumption that propaganda is something that we might get from the Soviet Union or Cuba, but that it is absurd to think of propaganda coming from Canada. Of all the articles we examined on the film flap, only two gave the reader any clue as to whether Justice was right in saying they were political propaganda. One was a review in The Washington Post of the film on nuclear war titled, "If You Love This Planet," which features the anti-nuclear activist, Helen Caldicott. The other was Mary McGrory's column. Even McCrory conceded that Caldicott's presentation was "unbalanced." She said: "She urges the people of Plattsburgh in her audience to close down the Strategic Air Command airbase nearby. She further tells them to take their babies to Washington and plant them on the desks of hawks."
A press officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington told AIM that this film was considered too one-sided for showing by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and for distribution by the Canadian embassy. Yet we are supposed to believe that because it is a product of Canada that it can't possibly be political propaganda.
The New York Times ran an editorial reminding its readers that the Film Board of Canada was founded in 1939 "by the renowned John Grierson" and that it 'has won international acclaim for the quality of its independent productions."
Neither The Times nor any other publication reminded its readers that the Film Board raised many a Canadian eyebrow during World War II, first for giving the impression that it was cool to the war until the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and second for the enthusiasm of its films supporting our Soviet ally. It was therefore not a total shock when in 1945 John Grierson's secretary. Freda Linton. was exposed by Igor Gouzenko as an important Soviet agent. Gouzenko was the code clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa who defected and exposed a very important Soviet spy ring operating out of Canada. Grierson left the Film Board shortly after the exposure of his secretary and tried to set up a film production company in this country, only to be deported in 1047. No reason was ever given. but it is believed to have been because of the Linton case.
All that was a long time ago, but the Canadian Film Board still has a reputation of being quite leftist and anti-American. That bent has. if anything. been enhanced by its employment of a number of American draft dodgers who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War.
The controversy over acid rain, its causes and effects, is one that divides not only the U.S. and Canada but also many scientists. The two Canadian films on this subject give the official Canadian point of view. "Acid Rain-- Requiem or Recovery" blames the problem on emissions from industrial plants in the United States and Canada. Mary McGrory says of it: "A more tactful, neutral, inoffensive presentation of a fearful problem that is being visited on one country (theirs) by another country (ours) cannot be imagined." Needless to say this "neutral" production does not reflect the views of experts such as Richard Semonin, professor of meteorology at the University of Illinois, who recently told a Senate committee that acid rain is not of recent origin and that there is no evidence of any recent increasing trend.
Write to Katharine Graham, Chairman, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. 20071. Suggest that she order her editors and reporters to quit inventing scandals where none exist.
The misinformation about the Justice Department action has been widely spread by the media. This would be an excellent subject for a letter to the editor of your local paper or for a topic to discuss on your favorite radio talk show.
The April 1983 issue of Mother Jones, a leftwing magazine, has an interview with Tom Brokaw. co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News, in which Brokaw expresses the following opinions. Ronald Reagan's values are "kind of Norman Rockwell-ish, Reader's Digest America, 1924." Ronald Reagan "had no real exposure to the rough spots in life." El Salvador "was the most sinister place I've ever been to." The State Department is wrong when it makes statements about how El Salvador is moving on the road to democracy and things are getting better. "I think that it's not true. I think that my job is to stay calm at the center and point out why they're wrong, not become histrionic about it .... Personally, I think it's outrageous." The abortion issue "comes down to the question of whether a woman has a right to control her own body .... (S)he does have that right, but I think it's one of the most troubling issues of our time." "I think that the great moral issue in terms of life and death and the state is capital punishment .... I think it is a blight on our values."
On "Eric Sevareid's Chronicles" aired by a Washington area Public Broadcasting Station on March 3. Sevareid discussed agent orange. the defoliant blamed by some Vietnam veterans for many health problems. He said: "The argument is over the main component of agent orange, something called dioxin."
Wrong! Dioxin is a contaminant found in agent orange in minute quantities, about 1 part per hundred million, not a principal ingredient of the defoliant. The only heavy exposure to agent orange by American troops in Vietnam was experienced by the men who sprayed it - the men of Operation Ranch Hand. The Air Force is in the process of giving them very thorough physical exams to see if they are suffering any greater-than- expected health problems. The results so far show that their mortality rate is no higher than the rate for the control group.
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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
AT THE END OF FEBRUARY ANOTHER "BIG SCANDAL" ERUPTED IN WASHINGTON. IT CONCERNED three Canadian films that the Department of Justice ruled would have to bear a notice indicating that-they were produced by a registered foreign agent - the National Film Board of Canada. As we point out in our lead story in this issue, there was nothing unusual about this. It was a routine action by the unit at the Justice Department that administers the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that has been on the books since 1938. The story was blown up into a scandal by ignorant and/or malicious Journalists. They were quickly joined by politicians and the ACLU/environmentalist spokesmen who were equally ignorant and eager to lambaste the Reagan administration whether it was justified or not. The air was taken out of their sails within a few days as the Justice Department released the information about the Foreign Agents Registration Act and its administration that showed how silly the hysterical media treatment had been. But those who spread the misinformation were not quite so zealous about setting the record straight. As a result, the chances are that most of those who read or heard about the initial charges probably still don't realize that it was all just a big media mistake. For example, Cong. Ron Dellums speaking at the nuclear freeze rally at the Capitol on March 8 brought the subject up, totally oblivious to the fact that what he was saying had been shown to be nonsense at least one week previously.
IN MY VIEW, THE WASHINGTON POST WAS THE LEADING CLUPRIT IN THIS SLEAZY LITTLE DRAMA. Its performance was very similar to what it had done last December in cooking up phony scandals about the Legal Services Corporation Board and Interstate Commerce Commissioner Fred Andre. I have discussed those cases in my syndicated column, in our radio program, "Media Monitor," and in my speeches, but we have slighted them in the AIM Report. It seems desirable to me to show the pattern chat these cases reveal in the conduct of The Washing- ton Post by putting all three of them together in this issue. The New York Times proved itself again to be far more professional than The Post. Its editorial writers succumbed to the hysteria and ran a couple of dumb editorials on the subject, but it placed the news story, a reasonably accurate UPI dispatch, back in the TV section, not on page one. The most pleasant surprise came on the Public TV program, 'Washington Week in Review," on March 4. Charles McDowell, a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, stated bluntly that the media had gotten the story all wrong and had given the Reagan administration a "bum rap." Moderator Paul Duke sought to salve the wound opened by McDowell by suggesting that the reporters had perhaps been influenced to treat the story as they did because of the climate created by administration assaults on the First Amendment. No one asked Mr. Duke to document that charge.
ACCURACY IN MEDIA HAS SUBMITTED AN AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTING THE EFFORTS OF BRUCE Friedman, the attorney for Dr. Carl A. Galloway, to get the court to let him make public the CBS News outtakes which he says will show that some of the interviews done by "60 Minutes" are contrived and rehearsed. We intend to send a lawyer on our staff to Los Angeles to argue for release of the films on March 16. In our brief we point out that the media cry for openness and letting the sunshine in, except when that might expose wrongdoing on their part. We assert that the public has a right to know if CBS has been misleading the viewers of "60 Minutes" as Bruce Friedman charges. Watch for the court decision on this motion. Bruce Friedman tells me that CBS has come up with a new tactic to delay the trial of the Galloway suit. They are now challenging the constitutionality of the California libel law. He thinks they are trying to wear him and Dr. Galloway down, dragging out the litigation and burdening them with costs they can ill afford. They have withdrawn their offer to settle out of court for $500,000.
YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND AN AIM CONFERENCE ON APRIL 15-16 IN WASHINGTON. THE subject: "THE MEDIA: WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON?". It will be a showcase for the speakers of the AIM-Allied Educational Foundation Speakers Bureau. All the speakers on the program will be from our speakers bureau. The object is to present an excellent discussion of media coverage of a variety of important topics and at the same time show the quality of the speakers that we can provide to groups throughout the country FREE OF CHARGE, The speakers bureau will even pick up the speakers' expenses if the inviting group is unable to do so.