TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/013089/01308900.014

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 5.4 KB | 98 lines

PRESS, Page 54

Covering the Bush White House

After a stage-managed era, reporters hope for openness

By Laurence Zuckerman


    As George Bush took the oath of office last week, another, less
heralded transition was quietly taking place in news bureaus
throughout the capital. ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, who
became the embodiment of the White House press corps during the
Reagan era, stepped aside after twelve years on the beat to
co-anchor a new ABC prime-time news hour due later this year. The
Washington Post's Lou Cannon, who started covering Reagan in his
early days in California, began a leave of absence to write a book
about the Reagan presidency.

    Like the incoming Bush Cabinet, the new White House press corps
has many familiar faces. Lesley Stahl, who covered Reagan's first
term for  CBS News, is returning. So are veteran Reagan watchers
for  ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los
Angeles Times and Boston Globe. Yet White House reporters old and
new take up their posts at a time when the beat, though still one
of journalism's most prestigious, has lost some of its luster after
eight years of obsessive news management by the Reagan
Administration. "Like the peso, it's been devalued," admits Boston
Globe reporter Walter Robinson, who saw two colleagues pass up
offers to move to Washington to cover Bush. Adds Wall Street
Journal correspondent Michel McQueen, 29, one of the few reporters
new to the White House assignment: "People have said,
`Congratulations -- and condolences.' "

    Covering the White House has always been a difficult job. The
competition is keen, and the sources are limited. Unlike
Congressmen or even big-city mayors, who can be staked out and
buttonholed by reporters, the President and his top aides are
carefully protected by elaborate security measures and protocol.
Journalists who push too hard risk getting frozen out. "Generally
the best, most aggressive reporting does not come from White House
reporters, because they have to maintain their good relations,"
says Knight-Ridder correspondent Owen Ullmann.

    Still, the White House is considered a plum assignment,
especially in television, because almost anything the President
does or says makes the front page and tops the evening news.
Exploiting this seemingly insatiable appetite for presidential news
was one of the Reagan Administration's key contributions to the
long history of White House press manipulation. By placing the
President in attractive settings -- meeting foreign heads of state
or splitting wood at his California ranch -- the White House p.r.
apparatchiks provided the networks with the daily supply of visuals
they desired, while cultivating the image of an active and
accessible leader. In reality, Reagan was carefully cloistered from
reporters, who could rarely do more than shout questions at him
over the din of helicopter rotors.

    Bush promises to be different. Although he adopted the Reagan
method during the campaign, stage-managing his every appearance and
sequestering himself from the press, he held more news conferences
in the ten weeks following the election than Reagan did in his last
two years in office.  "I think you will see him act as President
very much as he has been in the last few weeks," says White House
spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.

    After the frustrations of the Reagan years, the new White House
reporters seem enraptured by Bush, at least for now. "If you ask
him a question, he'll stop and answer it," gushes Janet Cawley of
the Chicago Tribune. While Reagan rarely broke from his precise
daily schedule, Bush seems to be cultivating the image of a
"spontaneous" citizen-President, impulsively heading out on the
town for a Chinese dinner or a movie.

    Even during the transition period, however, there were signs
that Bush might not be so open when it counts. On Jan. 5, the day
after U.S. F-14s shot down two Libyan jets, a Bush speech to a
veterans' group that was supposed to be covered by a pool of
reporters was closed to the press, apparently to shield Bush from
questions about the dogfight. (The Vice President's office claims
that the event was never officially designated for press coverage.)
The incident recalls the protective instincts of the Bush
campaign's image handlers, many of whom will have the same roles
in the White House.

    Surprisingly, few in the new White House press corps seem to
have considered how they may combat Reagan-style manipulation in
the future. "There is nothing the press can do if Bush is as
popular as Reagan was," says Lesley Stahl. Not true. For one thing,
editors and producers can fight the compulsion to define everything
the President does as news.

    They can also act on a principle that is agreed upon by news
executives at every symposium about the press and the presidency:
that the White House is in many ways the worst place to cover the
Executive Branch. By redeploying some of the vast resources spent
on the "body watch," news organizations could more actively probe
the dozens of federal agencies that actually make up the
Administration and carry out most of its work. That would help free
reporters from their dependence on handouts from the White House.
For as United Press International correspondent Helen Thomas, a
28-year White House veteran, rightly points out, "All new
Presidents promise to be more open, but eventually the door closes,
and the penchant for secrecy grows."