(2 of 4)
Once, an able correspondent who was on good terms with Cabinet members and Senators and could find his way around a smoke-filled room could pretty well cover the town. But the New Deal brought a new journalistic era. When the U.S. went off the gold standard, for example, most correspondents knew it was big news, but precious few could tell their readers why. New Deal measures forced reporters to become experts on economics, finance, farming, law, foreign trade; World War II added military strategy and nuclear physics; the cold war brought the problem of "security" in peacetime, a magic word some bureaucrats have misused to suppress legitimate information.
The Leak. As the Government expanded, it developed a slick technique of professional pressagentry. Sometimes the pressagents do a helpful and necessary job of briefing reporters on complicated subjects. But too often they plug only the Administration's side of a crucial Government issue, hope the reporter hasn't the sense or gumption to dig up the other side. The Federal Government now employs about 5,000 full-and part-time pressagents, spends an estimated $65 million a year on salaries and printing. The payroll is still growing fast; in a year the number of pressagents in the Defense Department and armed services alone has nearly doubled. In addition, nearly every high Administration official has a press-relations adviser who masquerades as a "special assistant," feeds the press a constant flow of "don't-quote-me" background information or "leaks" calculated to prove that 1) the official is wonderful, 2) his opponents are not to be trusted and 3) all is well in Government. For example, Lieut. Colonel Ted Clifton, special aide to General Omar Bradley, is known as "Bradley's leak," Paul Duncan as Price Boss Mike Di Salle's.
Newsmen occupy a higher position in Washington than anywhere else. They are wined, dined and courted endlessly, not only by bureaucrats but by politicos, lobbyists, ambassadors and hordes of pressure boys who want the Government to do—or not to do—something. They belong to such exclusive clubs as the Metropolitan, where it is usual to see Columnist Walter Lippmann sitting down with an ambassador. They are even decorated by foreign governments.
News Lid. The press corps has tried to cope with these problems of size and propaganda by narrowing the fields it can cover efficiently. Reporters concentrate on Capitol Hill, the White House, State Department and Pentagon. They look in on most of the other departments only when there is news breaking, make little effort to dig it up. Competition, in many cases, has given way to the "pool," where all reporters share & share alike, or to cliques that work for the defeat of outsiders.