Designed to Defang

Once it seemed that Spiro Agnew had the assignment more or less to himself--defending his President, and the republic for that matter, from the "nattering nabobs of negativism" in the press. Now the Vice President is only one member of a Republican chorus.

The latest attack occurred last week when the Republican National Committee newsletter Monday chastised NBC and United Press International for using North Vietnamese film and still pictures that purported to show civilians suffering from U.S. bombing. Monday interviewed executives of NBC and U.P.I, and paraphrased their responses this way: "When it comes to deciding if their facilities should be used to disseminate Communist propaganda, the question of whether the national interest of the United States is or is not served is not a consideration." Executive Producer Wallace Westfeldt of NBC Nightly News said later that he had been quoted out of context and that his meaning had been distorted. Broadcasting the film, he said, was "part of the free flow of information. It is very important to know what the North Vietnamese are seeing." Both news organizations had clearly identified the material's source, and such journalistic use of enemy-supplied pictures has been routine for years.

Monday's carping would be of little significance were it not for other signs. President Nixon himself recently bemoaned "the tendency of some in the media--not all, but some in the media--constantly to emphasize the negative." White House Speechwriter Patrick Buchanan told a television interviewer that a few networks, newspapers and newsmagazines were guilty of an anti-Administration "monopoly of ideas." He talked about "antitrust-type action" if the offenders continue to "freeze out opposing points of view." On Meet the Press, Presidential Adviser John Ehrlichman complained about young journalists intent on "salting away in their reporting on facts their own personal points of view." Patrick Gray, just before his appointment as acting director of the FBI, devoted a long speech to journalism's role in the "culture of disparagement." Kansas Senator Robert Dole, the Republican national chairman, warned a California audience of "attempted media sabotage of the national policies of the U.S."

The timing of the concerted outburst seems designed to defang criticism in advance of the presidential election campaign. And the strategy could be effective. The fact that many of the larger news organizations lean to the liberal side gives the Administration ammunition. The occasional errors committed by newsmen add to the media's credibility problem. "The White House is feeding on it," says Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News, a past president of the White House Correspondents Association. "Now that they are coming up to the campaign, they look for a scapegoat. The press is an immediate and vulnerable target, because people tend to blame the press for the bad news they read."

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