See How They Run

Are. You. Going. Because. Despite what you might think this is not another campaign for analogy. It is however about the people who write them. People who shaped much of our knowledge of political candidates and campaigns. People who take the political system and their role in it very seriously inside the political process. They're known as national political reporters or the campaign press corps outside. They're known simply as the press. Book. Right. Chances are the 30 plus million people who voted for Jimmy Carter last Tuesday had

their opinions of him shaped by someone else. Chances are those opinions were based on thousands of political stories that appeared in 700 newspapers across the country. Stories that were broadcast on 800 television stations stories that were distributed by two major wire services to their 11000 clients. And chances are most of those stories were written by political reporters. How reliable is the national press in its role of opinion leadership. According to Dick stout. Not very. As a political reporter he covered the last three presidential elections for Newsweek this year. He moved to the other side where as Morris he would always press secretary. He saw political reporting from a different perspective. Every political reporter should be locked in a room for six weeks after a campaign is over and be forced to read everything he's written or view everything he's done TV or listen to anything he's done on Radio 4

6 4 weeks to the whole campaign. And I think he'd come out a cleaner man. Stout statements point to what some feel has become a fact in present day political journalism the institutionalization of what critics call the superficial story where in-depth reporting is the exception rather than the rule. The problem could be overlooked if it were not for the power the press holds over the process a power which can no longer be measured only by the size of its combined circulation or viewership figures. While not a public institution the press has begun to exercise some powerful public functions it has become a hand-picked jury that roams the country every four years rendering daily verdicts on political performances. And presidential campaigns unlike any other. Somebody has to be the testing board for the candidates. You have to go and pursue candidates as hard as you can on ISSUES to see if they if they have this thing together if they know what they're talking about me and you have to do this because no one else can do or the voter

can do it. Every voter can't get to every candidate in question about what is this what is this. And what would he do about Vietnam what would you do about bussing that. The role of the press as a collective conscience for the public is not a recent phenomenon. After all reporters were watching the political process long before all Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. And let's face it that process isn't what it used to do. Now would it not. Now I have not heard yet presidential candidates must now subject themselves to an agonizing ritual of 31 state primaries and exhaustive system that encourages nearly everyone but the county sheriff to run for president. In addition to mayhem the growth of the primaries over the years has resulted in the demise of the political boss with everything thrown open to the people. The boss could no longer mediate disputes among candidates define issues set agendas

or pass the word about who to vote for. It may be true that the names Tweed LaGuardia and Tammany are immortalized in the pages of political history but their power as political bosses has been passed on to the press in that transfer of power. The press once a mere viewer of the political process has become an active participant. I had my I wish I would you know not my people. Why am I in a way. The growth of television contributed to that transfer of power. The first broadcast of President Eisenhower's press conferences for example brought the immediacy of politics into living rooms across the country. Television began to set the standard not only for the reporting of events but often for the nature of the events themselves. News conferences were scheduled by the candidates to gain maximum exposure on TV's early evening newscasts and even the settings for

political concession speeches were addressed so that the television cameras could catch a glimpse of what for the candidate would later become a forgotten dream. Over time the immediacy of the medium gave rise to a different kind of attitude among political reporters a kind of admissions that suggested a link to the inner workings of candidate's minds. The reporters were not only concerned with what a candidate said or did but also began guessing at what he thought along more as you would all know that this was a very long shot. It all depended on people rallying around him as a liberal thought that this would still be a liberal year in the Democratic majority you know as has been amply demonstrated it simply isn't. Television in recent years has contributed to the growth of a curious phenomenon a phenomenon which holds that the reporter is a star. It doesn't mean necessarily that the style of political reporters has finally triumphed over the substance of their political reporting. It simply reinforces the notion that reporters are participants and as such

a few of them stand on equal footing with the candidates themselves. Both groups recognizing that the process demands pro-forma as well as substance. And lead to recalls for everybody the days when Tom Pettit was the real David Brinkley and I was the real Chet Huntley of them and the glory of NBC is going to do six seven eight nine 10 as a result of only the public appropriately enough finds itself confused. They trust Walter Cronkite more than they trust politicians but they are suspicious of the medium in which he works hard. For example despite our previously held notions about the effect of television on the public recent social science data suggests that the tube does a less effective job of shaping public perception of political candidates than do newspapers. As a matter of fact researchers have found that even paid political announcements convey more meaningful information about political candidates than do network news programs.

Boy I think that one of the reasons for the superficiality of much of the information that reaches the general public is that most of them get their news about campaigns on television and most of the television reporting on campaigns and analysis of campaigns is done by people who spend very very little of their time at it. The result is that they're they're fed like a Strasbourg loose full of numbers and facts. A couple of nights before and regurgitated. It's not very quality high quality stuff. There may be more to it though than simply the quality of reporting. We are if you haven't noticed it yet in an age of new television technology and age of the action cam portable video tape devices that enable the public to see news as it happens. Challenged by this immediacy all reporters both in television and in print have responded in the best tradition of the scoop they have begun predicting the outcome of events

before they actually occur. That's a tradition you know you can say why does present a lot of things why does it. Sensationalize some things why it is that. Milked the last bit of impact out of the lead on a story or out of a headline. Because that's the way we've done it for so many years. But I remember. Some Washington coverage of the Iowa caucuses. There is one reporter there who before the caucuses rode. You know we've got to be careful because we're making a media event out of these caucuses. But the day after he was one of the strongest Jimmy Carter is now the front runner. Reporters I mean the story very hard. Mr. C. makes his living criticizing the press for The Washington Post. It was no accident that he made reference to the coverage of the Iowa precinct caucuses for the caucus results. Plus what was written and said about them had a lot to do with the reason Jimmy Carter was elected last Tuesday.

And then our first order of business is to elect a permanent committee man or chairperson understand as though one must look at a little political history for its lessons went on learned in campaign 76. In 1968. The press was criticized for not knowing about the mechanics of the Republican candidate until they read a book entitled The Selling of the president. Nearly a year after Richard Nixon took the oath of office they vowed never again to ignore the inner workings of campaigns but they did it again in 1972. Caught up in the horse race between Edmund Muskie and George McGovern. The press overlooked McGovern's controversial income redistribution proposals for months as the South Dakota senator piled up his excessive string of primary victories. They said they weren't going to let that happen again either. They said that 1976 was going to be different. Before the season came they said they were going to be much more responsible this time. Look at character and not worry so much about the

politics the backroom stuff what the staff is doing. Not handicap not give so much attention to what happens in New Hampshire. Every one of those thousands before hand have been violated just like like the guy that John Kerry says he's not going to take a drink again and they just can't get away it seems that the media can from and the campaign for making more out of New Hampshire than it should have been for overanalyzing for over concluding after each single primary then having to change their conclusions. Jules Witcover One-Day wrote. Jimmy Carter is now inevitable after Michigan and Maryland and the same front page Jimmy Carter no longer inevitable and so on. What's what's it all worth all that stuff. It's worth one thing to the candidate that benefits from the handicapping and another thing to the candidate who doesn't but I'm very glad to be back in our. Face you know the First off political test. That I've had you know the whole primary season was in Iowa with your own delegates at the conventions

at that precinct at a level going and expressing your support for me. I got 90 percent of the people just going I got 5 percent or something. This is the zero version of the magazine cover. It's always been that way. Gave a little bit of a thing this year that momentum began 15 months ago in Iowa. The occasion was the state Democratic Party's annual get a bucket of chicken election year show in town the Jefferson Jackson Day dinner. The event attracted seven presidential candidates. Three correspondents from the major networks. And four national political reporters representing the New York Times The Washington Post the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Star. Taken together these papers represent what are the most important political barometers in the nation. Now none of the candidates and reporters were in Iowa because of the weather. They came simply because both politicians and the press agreed that the state's precinct caucuses were the first proving ground

for presidential aspirants. It's as if three candidates and one political columnist. Agree that Salinger paper airplanes from Pennsylvania Avenue into the fountain in front of the White House as a test if the three of them agree. And then none of them makes they've all lost. And the guy who spends the most time practicing in a wind tunnel has lost the most particularly if he had a reputation. That's why dates back to his. Stellar days in the back row of the fifth grade for throwing paper hat. A year from now all this may seem kind of silly. But we grasp at straws in this business you know and if you can detect the slightest straw on the way and or any kind of reaction to a candidate it can be helpful in the very early stages. The question is helpful to whom. The public or the politicians. The answer to that came on January 19th when precinct caucuses were held in living rooms church

basements and school houses throughout Iowa. The press covered the evening as if it were the election itself. The Democratic Party charge $15 a head for people to watch the media watch the people many of whom were there to watch the media in the first place. Buildings can be seen years ago. On the Democratic side state chairman Tom Wigley says a heavier than expected turnout is delaying things. Her hearing is just never in the area for the Republican straw poll straw poll recently. They had won several precinct where nobody showed up. It's like I don't know we just got a vote of no confidence in both of them. Yeah I think so. I think than it was but the results are slow We've had the largest caucuses we've ever held really said here is that we sleep in a minute slower than we thought. This your first back home. Will hold your. Nose.

This is just for the vote for the number for the full. Six right through word for word. Trouble is what happened in Iowa on January 19th was not an election. It was only the beginning of a very complex and very fluid process a process which by its nature attracted political activists and elites who could take advantage of its rules to hide their actual presidential preference for months was let's go ask people. Carter and the other guys of what they think of the system. They buy the system we don't have to explain it we distort what they got. Numbers. Faced with more candidates than they could count and a system they didn't understand the press called it the only way they knew how. And we've got about 5 percent of the damage. Carter is wiping them out because of running the middle is as a matter of fact Carter was not wiping them out in Iowa. Of the 50000 people attending caucuses that evening more than one out of three declared themselves uncommitted. And although Carter showed significant support his votes were

still nine percentage points away from first place. No matter he had achieved the appearance of victory in Iowa and the fact that the press and the politicians agreed on this made him the clear winner worthy of the term front runner. It's a term that helps a candidate gain more media exposure and more money. It's also a term that fits the horse race mentality of the process where reporters as participants are expected to make a book on each candidate's chance of success. Well there's no question the. Political reporters were there covering the race for mayor of Dubuque or present in the United States are interested in who's going to win. To expect them to be otherwise would be like expecting football writers not not to care which team is going to get to the Super Bowl that is in the nature of the process of one of the more fascinating questions. Just by the nature of our business you got six people running.

That's unwieldy to handle watching he has got one guy at Target you know front runner so what happens when a man is named front runner. In some ways it helps some I'm sure it helps his money which is my On the other hand he becomes the target. But I think it generally it helped him in New Hampshire and. It's helped him all along. It certainly did in looking more closely at the former Georgia Governor after the Iowa caucuses. The Press contributed to his momentum. And when the press wrote about Carter's rising chances of winning the Democratic nomination after the New Hampshire primary they did so based upon the returns from a state which contributes less than 1 percent of the total delegates to the national convention. They virtually ignore a delegate competition in states without primaries none the less. When Carter's first opponent dropped out of the race the press said that the great winnowing out process had begun. The system is working. You know there's been a rational narrowing down. Well who says the system is working the press that's working and. Who caused the narrowing.

Well I think the Press contributed a larger to narrowing. I mean whose judgment is it that it is a rational process that birch buy is out and. You do all this still lead. I don't know I don't know how to change that. But I think possibly the media ought to be a little more concerned about that. The press is concerned about it but it appears to be trapped inside a uniform of its own creation. It all boils down to formula formula which is encouraged by the way in which political campaigns are conducted today. These nonstop tracks across the country and back put a greater premium on the stamina of the candidates and reporters than on the substance of what either group is saying. One look at. One mile though. Faced with the daily deadlines and editorial pressure to come up with something reporters naturally

gravitate toward each other sharing advice and information. The girl you're traveling with the candidate you're getting limited information. From 10 to 15 people with a candidate who makes the same speech every day probably the same speech he made the day before and. If you had the handouts come from his managers. But don't add a great deal of information. So. If somebody gets a bright idea that this means something that nobody thought of before maybe they all. Put the lights all around and everybody gets intrigued with this new interpreter by then her voters have got to beware of that. They can make some mistakes there but I'm straight boys to mine regen comma. Uncommitted. Quote uncommitted unquote running north. We're I'm sorry. In addition to making mistakes they can also find themselves participating in a journalistic Chorus Line. One reporter sets the rhythm and the others follow. In 1972 for example I was precinct caucus system was even less understood than it

is today. But reporters and candidates arrived in Des Moines with the idea that its results were going to mean something. The problem was that none of them knew how to read the numbers so they turned to the person who did RW Apple of the New York Times. They looked over his shoulder as he was writing and the next day Apple story appeared under a different byline in most major newspapers in the country. It is true I think that I understood how the system worked better than most of the reporters who are here. I happen to be fascinated with such things. So I made it my business beforehand to understand it. It is also true that a lot of them came to look at my leisure. I don't know what they did afterwards because I didn't go and look at theirs. I think it's of expecting you know the repeal of human nature to expect the younger reporters and those who are less well-known publications and the less experienced ones and those whose budgets don't allow them to travel. As much. Not to want to

find out what Jules Witcover is going to be writing or what. Checks your mind is going to be writing. What Bill Boyer skill the L.A. Times is going to be writing. Or what I'm going to be writing. That's when I was a young reporter raced track to find out what the sort of what what the comparable fellows were right. It gets a little absurd I think when older reporters who shall remain nameless who are lazy don't invest the time to understand what's going on. And and then poach leads. But there's a good deal of that. There's also excessive coverage of what are saved for the participants very meaningless events like a walk down a nearly deserted main street in Ohio or a handshaking excursion through an airport ground. Some rain in. The sky beside me. And I started meeting near

the bay. Some sun. Rays stand. A chance. To. Hit. Good luck to everybody for.

The systems to main participants contribute to the daily parade of candidates schedule events that are highly visible that make good television and reporters fearful that something substantive might actually happen in their absence. Go along for the ride. In addition the roar of the crowd at a political event can give a reporter an idea of the strength of a given candidate's organizational efforts or of the capabilities of his staff. There are. Examples that indicate how a man functions under stress the kind of people he has around him. And I think all those things are important to know because. In a way a campaign is a is a is a trial run not running the country. But at dealing with dealing with. The handling of an organization. On the pressure. But a reporter loves to write stories about the mechanics of campaigns for more reasons than that. First everybody else writes them and there is no surer way of getting a story killed by an editor than to write about something that nobody else even notices.

And second the mechanics of the campaign are often the key to who is going to win it. And as such fall within reporters natural instincts to write about who's on first. It would suit me fine if all the candidates in all the primers presented themselves to the voters and invariably though such a focus on the blacks or prevents intelligent discussion of the issues of a campaign. And that's what many people feel politics is or should be all about. So I worry when we go into a program like the for us. One of two of the newsman on the panel. Will start asking questions about the techniques of politics. And this is the kind of thing reporters get interested in. I think it's just like a quarterback coming out of football and then reporting on the game he gets interested in technique to a point that I think it leaves the audience behind sometimes the press argues that it didn't do that this year that the sophisticated polling techniques told us what the issues were how people felt about them and why. But the point is not necessarily how the press treated issues they defined as important. It's how they treated the issues that were important to the candidates. Milton shap complained that his

programs for Educational Trust Funds were dismissed by the press as campaign rhetoric. And Morris Udall felt that his programs for Tax Reform and oil company divestiture got lost in as he says the orgy of publicity that Jimmy Carter received after the Iowa caucuses. And then there's Jimmy Carter. His issues and how his alleged waffling on them became an issue in itself. They've been on a search for a stiff around for Jimmy Carter. At the same time they have not really pin them down on why it is he says one thing in one state they never do that. And another thing in another state they just kind of say this is good old boy southern politics. But by going no one's still to this day knows what he what he believes or what he is. And I think that is one of the most serious shortcomings of political coverage this whole damn season. Maybe maybe not. After all by the time election day rolls around most Americans had the chance at least to find out what Jimmy Carter was all about. If they

watch TV's marathon debates and if they could understand what they contain no matter. Nearly 70 million people stayed home from the polls last Tuesday thereby demonstrating that they not only never cared about who the front runner was they didn't even care about who won. Don't let that surprise you. It's been that way all along. Those Iowans whose preferences were used by the press to change Jimmy who did Jimmy Carter last January 19 comprised only 10 percent of the registered Democratic voters in the state. And in New Hampshire where Carter was anointed the front runner voter turnout was only slightly better. Why then all the fuss. Why do reporters keep filing stories about the political process when those stories have sparked so little interest in its outcome. Part of the answer has to do with tradition. The same tradition that underlies the present horse race method of political reporting the same tradition that says the press has always covered politics and it always will. Part of the answer has to do with the fact that the media today is geared for production. There is space

and time to fill and oftentimes it's easily filled with a political story. And part of the answer has to do with the reporters themselves. Reporters who like to travel love politics and feel strongly about the need for the public to be kept informed. But given the present widespread apathy toward politics reporters who argue that the public has a right to know might very well ask themselves whether the public cares. While the scope of political reporting has increased dramatically in the last 20 years voter turnout has a. Nearly 63 percent of the country's eligible voters took the time to go to the polls in 1960 just about 50 percent bothered to vote last Tuesday. If this trend continues the dialogue that is the political process could very well end up consisting of politicians and the press talking to themselves. Thank you everybody. Anything here really.

No.