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There was little danger of that. When the swarm finally landed in Grenada's capital of St. George's, the cadres of Cuban guerrilla fighters, rumored to be in the hills, were nowhere to be found. Grenadians, who cheerfully underwent interview after interview, all seemed to think the invasion had been a splendid show, or that liberation from Marxist rule was a good thing. Each of the networks had a dozen or more staffers on the scene, and more than 150 news organizations had at least one, but there were no scoops to be had. Even if there had been, it would have been no easy trick to get them swiftly back home. The U.S. bombing around St. George's knocked out a transmission center, severing cable and tele phone facilities. In order to send their stories, reporters had to hop a military plane back to Barbados.
The end of the fighting by no means ended the conflict be tween the Federal Government and the U.S. press over the mili tary's refusal to let reporters cover the invasion. Complained the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in a telegram to Defense Secretary Weinberger: "We object to the Defense Department's failure to honor the long tradition of on-the-scene coverage of American military operations."
Prominent newspapers agreed.
The liberal Washington Post denounced the restrictions as "inexcusable." The conservative Chicago Tribune was hardly less angry: "Freedom was badly served by banning journalists from Grenada during those crucial days."
Such protests won support gress. Michigan's Democratic Donald Riegle formally proposed, and the full Senate agreed by a vote of 53 to 18, that "restrictions imposed upon the press in Grenada shall cease." At a House com mittee hearing, NBC Commentator John Chancellor said that the censorship was not based on military need but "got into the area of politics."
Chancellor disclosed to committee members one unsettling fact, though: let ters sent to NBC on the Government-press conflict had been running 10 to 1 in favor of the Administration. Reaction at other networks and newspapers was much the same. "The media need to listen to the public on some of these issues," observed Republican Congressman Carlos J. Moorhead of California.
Indeed, the press was by no means of one like mind on the blackout. "Rather than mount ing a constitutional soapbox," said the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "the press might better spend its time contemplating why it was not informed and in vited." The St. Louis Globe-Democrat volunteered a blunt explanation: "... the television networks' antidefense bias." Declared conservative Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan: "If senior U.S. commanders running this operation harbor a deep distrust of the American press, theirs is not an unmerited contempt."