"No mother believes her child is going to die," cried Elizabeth Glaser. "But after two years of struggling, ((we)) had to face the reality that our daughter was going to die." Those poignant words, spoken last week before the House Budget Committee, were intended to prod the Federal Government into spending more money on researching pediatric AIDS. The witness, wife of TV star Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky and Hutch), had contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion nine years ago and passed it along to her infant daughter Ariel and son Jacob. Since Ariel's death in 1988, the Glasers have devoted much of their energies to publicizing the plight of AIDS-infected children.
No one could question the worthiness of the Glasers' cause, the depth of their tragedy or the sincerity of their commitment. Yet their ability to generate headlines clearly resulted from Paul's celebrity status. Were the Glasers manipulating press coverage? Of course they were, although their motives were above reproach.
Attempts to influence news reporting, however, are not always prompted by such laudatory aims. Professional publicity experts have made a multibillion- dollar industry out of copping column inches and airtime for everything / from smokers' rights and rap records to haute couture and the Trump bust-up. And the White House has raised press manipulation to a virtual art form, often for the narrowest political motives. The Reagan Administration, led by the Great Persuader himself, was notorious for its spin control. Last week the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a Washington-based watchdog group, issued a report detailing nearly 100 instances of news orchestration, press restrictions and disinformation by the Bush Administration.
Not that the reporter is always an acquiescent pawn: manipulation is a two- way street. In a series of New Yorker articles that was recently published in book form, writer Janet Malcolm argues that the journalist's power to play God with a source's life inevitably leads to treachery. She examines the case of best-selling author Joe McGinniss, who ingratiated himself (and shared a book contract) with Jeffrey MacDonald, a physician accused of brutally murdering his wife and children. But instead of writing the exculpatory tome that MacDonald had been led to expect, McGinniss produced a work of pitiless condemnation. Malcolm uses this example to argue that journalists are reprobates who hoodwink helpless patsies and publicly betray them.
Although few journalists aim to become intimate friends of homicidal psychopaths, most have felt ambivalent about the reporter-source liaison. That relationship is one in which loyalties are fragile, trust is withheld and manipulation by both the reporter (who controls access to the mass public) and the source (who controls access to information) is normal.