Results tagged “Media” from One Hour to Read

How exactly did this country elect Richard Nixon president twice? It's a difficult question to answer, but this book written after the 1968 election shows in some way how it was done. His handlers that year packaged him as if he were some household product, and it pretty much worked. (I'm glad I was able to purchase this book used at The Strand in New York, so that I got the original cover with Nixon's face on a cigarette box.)

Those running the Nixon campaign (including Roger Ailes, very young then and now the head of Fox News) were convinced that television could help Nixon. After the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, that was an unbelievable claim to many, but the Nixon team were able to show carefully edited pieces on television that showed only the best of Nixon. Their commercials were also rather groundbreaking -- often just a series of powerful still images with a Nixon speech in the background. One of the most powerful depicted scenes of violence and chaos, all while Nixon spoke about the need for greater law and order in America. 

The Nixon team was also obsessed with how much the media were against them. They were convinced that the television networks would pick only the worst shot of Nixon each day, so they purposefully had Nixon make just one televised event a day. That way, the networks would have only one shot to choose from and couldn't screw over Nixon, as was their alleged wont.

Nixon speechwriter Ray Price said this about Nixon's "spontaneity" in November 1967:

We have to capture and capsule this spontaneity -- and this means shooting RN (Richard Nixon) in situations in which it's likely to emerge, then having a chance to edit the film so that the parts shown are the parts we want shown.

Ah, yes, that spontaneous Nixon!

This quote comes from the last quarter of the book, which just contains a series of memos written by the Nixon staff. I'm not sure why they would allow these memos to get into the hands of McGinniss, but in many ways this is the most fascinating parts of the book. Here, for example, is what Nixon aide Harry Treleaven said in one memo about magazine advertising:

Rich, warm advertising in a woman's own medium, the service magazine, next to her cake mixes and her lipstick advertisements will go a long way, I believe, toward making Mr. Nixon acceptable to female viewers.

The Nixon people seemed to be good at what they did, but they didn't exactly have the best candidate to work with. Nixon aide Harry Treleaven explains one issue:

Then we had the basic problem of Nixon's personality. There were certain things people just would not buy about the guy. For instance, he loves to walk on the beach, but we couldn't send a camera out to film him picking up seashells. That would not have been credible.

I'm not entirely sure about this book. It's an awesome read, but I do have some questions about its authenticity.  I mean, all these Nixon people wouldn't have wanted to be quoted by him. How could they have been that naive when everything else in the book shows them so professional?  

I used to be more of Kennedy guy than a Nixon guy. I would read all sorts of stuff about JFK, but now I've come to be more fascinated with Nixon. He's such an incredibly odd and unlikely politician. He should have been the power behind the throne, and yet somehow with the most awkward personality he was elected twice.

One final note: The author is in the news this week. That's because McGinniss moved from Alaska this week. This is the same Joe McGinniss, who is writing a book about Sarah Palin and rented the house next to her. Sarah Palin, of course, reacted by building a large fence, and you get the feeling the Nixon people should have done that as well.

I haven't been around these parts lately because, like last summer, I decided to tackle a several hundred page book for the summer. This time, it was a 700-page book about the rise of the modern media. Like "War and Peace," this wasn't such a great beach read either, but it was enjoyable. I'm a sucker for any book about people like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein, and John Kennedy.

This book is especially interesting because it was written in 1979 about the rise of modern media, and coincidentally that's about the time the fall of modern media began. Halberstam charts the course of four major media companies from the 1950s through the 1970s -- CBS, The Washington Post, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. Among other things, the book seems to be about the consolidation of modern media and its massive influence on the country, which in some ways has become deconsolidated since then. Sure, we have much larger media monopolies now, but with all the online platforms the power any one of these news outlets wields seems to have diminished. 

Halbserstam alternates between the four organizations. I found I really loved the parts about CBS and the Washington Post, while I didn't always care about the Los Angeles Times and Time.That's probably just because of my personal tastes though.  I have to admit that I didn't know the latter two were such conservative beacons. Back in the 1950s, Time seemed to be far more Republian than Fox News is today, while the Los Angeles Times practically invented Richard Nixon. It's interesting that 1960 was really the first challenging election Nixon ever had since the Times made his California elections so easy.

While it was interesting, I think that 700 words was a bit more than I needed to know about all this. I just didn't always need to know about all the obscure editors of these newspapers. I was also a little disappointed in the book when I did some research online afterwards. For example, are news anchors in Sweden really called Cronkiters? Um, no, though Halberstam seems to think so. This came up again when Cronkite died recently and that little tidbit made it into all the obituaries, even if it was news to the people of Sweden. Halberstam was apparently the first source for this misinformation.  

Also, the "Cronkite Moment" is a bit disputed. Lyndon Johnson allegedly said that if he lost Cronkite he lost America right after watching Cronkite's unfavorable documentary about the Vietnam War. Others have shown that Johnson could not have seen it because he was in Texas giving a speech at the time of the broadcast. It's a good story though, and personally I like to think that LBJ would have Tivoed the program.

Finally, I always enjoy a bit of synergy in my reading, such as when Halberstam writes about Teddy White's career at Time. Earlier this year, I read White's "The Making of the President." Also, while at Harvard in the 1930s, Teddy White received a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, "highly prized among his peers," to go to China. One of our students actually won this fellowship last year to study in Belgium with his advisor, though I had no idea at all that it was highly prized. I thought it was mainly just convenient, since it meant that we wouldn't have to cover his stipend.

A Life in Journalism

This is the second book I have read this year by former CBS reporters who worked in Washington. First Roger Mudd, and now Daniel Schorr. I'm going to have to come up with a "CBS Washington" tag before long.

Frankly, I picked this book up, because the author seemed to be kind of a jerk. That's not my normal reason for buying books, but I was curious about Schorr after reading Roger Mudd's "The Place To Be" about his time at CBS. In that book, Schorr seemed to be such a controversial figure, rather than the grandfatherly commentator who has occasionally woken me up on NPR.

Mudd's book about CBS News didn't exactly attack Schorr, but much of the CBS bureau seemed to take great offense at Schorr's aggressive behavior towards his colleagues. He was widely suspected of stealing stories from others. And when he released the classified Pike Report to the Village Voice, it was felt by many that he tried to frame the whole thing on Lesley Stahl. Stahl still seems to despise him.

Not surprisingly, Schorr doesn't seem like a jerk at all when he's the one telling the story. All his actions seem perfectly reasonable. That's what's so great about autobiographies. He doesn't sidestep any of the controversies he was involved in, but he isn't apologetic for any of them either. After reading both books, I don't even know if he should be.

Despite all this, it was exciting to read Schorr's tales of Khrushchev, the Berlin Wall, and Watergate. Famously, he was also on Nixon's enemies list and had the surreal experience of reading out his own name (#17) when he revealed the list live on television for the first time.

Interestingly, Mudd's book devotes entire sections to his colleague Daniel Schorr. Meanwhile, Schorr mentions Mudd a grand total of four times, and only once in any detail. Mudd may have been more successful at the time -- and has probably written the better book -- but Schorr, jerk or not, is by far the more interesting figure.

Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News

As possibly one of the most boring people in the world, I decided that I really needed to read a book about television news reporters in the 1960s. Roger Mudd was Walter Cronkite's primary backup on the CBS Evening News, and later he anchored the NBC Nightly News aside Tom Brokaw. Now, in his 80s, he's written a book about his experiences. So, in short, I am not even interesting enough to read about primary news anchors.


Here's the odd path that brought me to Roger Mudd. Someone on the Slate Cultural Gabfest recommended Timothy Crouse's 1972 book "The Boys on the Bus" about the media.  I couldn't find that, so instead I read Hunter S. Thompson's great book about that campaign. I eventually did find the Crouse book in which he mentions Roger Mudd, at which point I remembered spotting Mudd's book in a bookstore a few months earlier.

And, of course, I loved it. It's not always the most well-written book. He jumps around from story to story at times, but it's a nice look at what television news was like back in its glory days. It's part memoir but also part a profile of the CBS Washington bureau. He interviews every major reporter who worked in that bureau, including even Dan Rather -- a bit awkward as the two were at times fierce rivals for Cronkite's anchor chair. Mudd is passionately proud of the work that CBS News did back then, and it's fascinating to read his stories.
 
I tried to find some clips of him on Youtube, but there aren't many. When it comes to old CBS News clips, it's mostly Walter-to-Walter coverage. Still, there is his famous interview with Ted Kennedy, in which Kennedy does not seem to know why he wants to be Presient.

And then there is an especially creepy broadcast of the 1969 draft lottery, which must have been horrifying to watch. As a commenter there pointed out, it was just like the NBA draft lottery, but with lives.

That clip is somewhat gruesome, so here's a blooper with Chris Wallace from his NBC days. Ol' Roger is really cracking up at this.

Update: He's also featured twice in news montages during the excellent "Frost/Nixon" which I finally saw. 

It turns out that not only do I love gossip about today's journalists, but I also love it about the journalists of yesterday. Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" is full of it, as this is a book in which he followed around the media on the 1972 presidential campaign. For example, for some reason, I delighted in learning that CBS reporters felt Walter Cronkite was such an air hog that they used to say CBS had "Walter-to-Walter coverage."

1972 seems to be a pivotal year, because this book is full of people who would go onto more fame later. And some of the sections are particularly telling. After Memo-gate, this passage about Dan Rather shouldn't be too surprising:

He was famous in the trade for the times when he by-passed these formulas and "winged it" on a story. Rather would go with an item even if didn't have it completely nailed down with verifiable facts. If a rumor sounded solid to him, if he believed it in his gut or had gotten it from a man who struck him as honest, he would let it rip.

I also like this quote from Brit Hume because it seems to sum up much of what Fox News claims to stand for. The Fox News anchor was then an assistant to columnist Jack Anderson:

"Those [reporters] on the plane ... claim that they're trying to be objective. They shouldn't try to be objective, they should try to be honest. And they're not being honest.... They report what one candidate said, then they go and report what the other candidate said with equal credibility. They never get around to finding out if the guy is telling the truth.... What they pass off as objectivity is just a mindless kind of neutrality."

The print journalists are well represented here as well with long sections on legendary journalists like David Broder, Woodward and Bernstein, Jack Germond, Robert Novak, and others.

In short, this is just a great book, and some of the issues from 1972 are still relevant today. You'll see a lot of Barack Obama's campaign in McGovern's campaign. Unlike Obama, McGovern never did figure out how to transform an outsider primary campaign into a successful general election campaign.

And journalism seemed a lot more, um, entertaining back then. Here's Crouse's description of the "Zoo Plane," the overflow plane for the press who weren't quite important enough to travel on George McGovern's plane:

The excitement of riding the Zoo Plane sprang from the fact that all rules had been totally suspended. As the plane took off on the first flight of the morning, half the reporters crowded into the galleys, mixing themselves Bloody Marys from the endless supplies of free booze.... As the FASTEN SEAT BELT signs still flashed their warning, other reporters worked their way up the aisle to fetch their own breakfasts and make more drinks....

There were drugs on the plane too, pot, hash, MDA, cocaine. And those who indulged in such stimulants swore that there was no greater thrill than standing in the cockpit as the plane came in for a landing, listening to the crackle of the radio, surrounded by green and orange dials, watching the bright blue lights of the runway rush up at the window as the powerful engines cut back.... Every night, the pilots played to an overflow crowd in the cockpit.

Ah, yes, the golden days of journalism.

My Mother, Nancy Dickerson TV News' First Woman Star

John Dickerson is one of my favorite political reporters, meaning that I read all of his articles in Slate, listen to him on their weekly podcast, and am actually excited when he appears on "Washington Week in Review." Lest I seem too nerdy, I don't actually watch "Washington Week in Review." No, I listen to the podcast version. Okay, never mind, that makes me more nerdy.

This book is about his mother Nancy Dickerson, one of the first woman correspondents in TV news. After a few years as a producer, she became a correspondent for CBS News in 1960 and then worked for NBC News for most of the 1960's. I confess that I hadn't heard of her before. Admittedly, I wasn't alive when she was a star correspondent, though she was enough of a star that I'm surprised that I didn't know about her.

Her specialty was politics, and she was close to members of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, sometimes a little too close. She was often criticized for having too close a relationship to Johnson especially, though this was mostly because Lyndon Baines Johnson seemed to have a crush on her. It doesn't seem that there was any romantic relationship between them, though not for lack of trying on LBJ's part. At one point, during the 1960 campaign, Johnson had a few drinks and wandered into her hotel room in his pajamas to proposition her. She politely turned him down, and so he stayed in her room and talked about politics instead. Somehow, the pajamas make this story slightly classier than otherwise.

Later, during his Vice-Presidency, he was in Sweden, and knew that Nancy Dickerson was in Vienna on vacation. He then had the White House operators track her down, so that he could invite her to dinner in Paris. Again, she politely turned him down, but it's an amazing story. Ah, those were the days. Now, I don't think the Vice-President could be flown from Sweden to Paris in order to meet an attractive reporter for dinner in Paris. I think there has to be another reason for an Official State Visit.

Of course, I'm making the same mistake that others did at the time, by focusing on only the gossip. She was a remarkably hard-working reporter, as her son makes clear. As you can imagine, she didn't always get much respect from her colleagues in the press, though she did have important backers like Edward R. Murrow and Eric Servareid. She was a solid reporter, though she also tended to rely a little too much on her social connections to aid her reporting.

Dickerson is a great writer and writes a book that is also about himself, in addition to being about his mother. Some might complain about this, but I think it's interesting when he explores their relationship. He wasn't at all close to his mother during his teen years and tended to think she was a bit of a phony at the time, though he grew closer to her in her later years. In all, he handles some occasionally difficult material with ease. You try writing about the fact that your mother dated JFK. (They only went on a few dates in the early 1950s before Jackie.)

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, and I'm not sure what took me so long. It's by a writer whose work I enjoy. It's about TV news, and I'm always a sucker for books about TV news. And it contains all sorts of behind-the-scenes material about JFK. Throw in some baseball and a little time travel, and it would have been just perfect.