Filling Up the Empty Hours

By James Kelly

Question: What do 3,614 journalists do in a picturesque Swiss city when a couple of bigwig visitors declare a news blackout? Answer: They pester government spokesmen about whether Ronald Reagan was secretly recording his talks with Mikhail Gorbachev (no) and how Nancy Reagan coped with the cold (long underwear). In this summit of images, the quintessential picture of the press may have been the pack that gathered around the President as he walked into a reception held by the Swiss government. "Have you agreed on anything?" they shouted. "Can't say," Reagan replied puckishly, throwing up his hands in mock despair.

If the Geneva summit did not set a press attendance record (14,000 covered last year's Democratic Convention in San Francisco, for example), it probably rates at least an asterisk for the most reporters and technicians on hand to collect the least news. The event also marked Moscow's most ambitious effort yet to get its message across to the world media. In an attempt to match the Reagan Administration's well-honed communication skills, the Soviets set up shop a week before the summit at the International Conference Center, a concrete-block house dubbed "the bunker" and home to the non-U.S. journalists. The 55-man operation included a dozen high-powered experts fluent in English and led by well-known America Watcher Georgi Arbatov, head of the Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada. Besides providing twice-daily briefings that began several days before the two leaders arrived in Geneva, Arbatov & Co. mingled with journalists and appeared on the three U.S. television networks and CNN to offer official wisdom on topics ranging from ICBMs to Soviet Jews. "In the West the Soviet Union's situation is not known or is known incorrectly," explained Foreign Ministry Spokesman Vladimir Lomeiko. "There are two reasons for this. We do not explain our position well enough, and certain circles misrepresent our purposes."

Yet Lomeiko soon discovered that an open press policy can bring embarrassing questions. During a Sunday session in the cavernous briefing room, Irina Grivnina, a Soviet dissident who had been allowed to emigrate only last month, started yelling about political prisoners. The next day, when Swiss officials told Grivnina to leave as Lomeiko began his briefing, she angrily refused, pointing out her credentials as a reporter for the weekly Dutch magazine Elseviers. Grivnina's shouts attracted a stampede of reporters. Lomeiko, fuming about "people who use this for their own purposes," could barely be heard above the din. "It's either this woman or it's me," he shouted. "I warn you!" Finally, Lomeiko stalked out of the room, but not before cameras had captured the scene for the evening news.

The Soviet p.r. offensive, which seemed aimed primarily at European newsmen, drew mixed reviews. "I have never seen this before," marveled Marcella van der Wiel, a reporter for Amsterdam's De Telegraaf. "The Soviets ask how they can help you." Yet most journalists saw a change only in tone, not in message. ''Sure, it is being presented more intelligently," said Jacques Amalric of Paris' Le Monde. "But it is the same old speech."

Reagan Administration officials claimed not to have been surprised by the Soviet tactics. "We knew we were not going to have the run of the field to ourselves," said a U.S. official. "It was decided from the start that we were not going to play tit for tat." Nonetheless, the campaign of persuasion was not exactly one-sided. U.S. Information Agency aides handed out two-inch-thick briefing books to any reporter who asked (the Soviets picked up 50 or so). White House aides initially intended to deliver their briefings at the Hotel Intercontinental, half a mile from the Soviet operation. When U.S. officials realized that the Soviets were occupying most of the media spot-light, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane relented and repeated his first talk at "the bunker."

The news blackout, announced just after the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings began, ended the briefing wars. As U.S. and Soviet officials kept their lips sealed, reporters tried to wheedle tidbits out of Reagan and Gorbachev during their brief appearances before the cameras. One journalist who was not stymied by the ban was young Ron Reagan, who was covering the summit for Playboy. The President's son was allowed to hang around the White House team as they awaited Gorbachev's initial arrival at the Chateau Fleur d'Eau, prompting grumbles from several White House correspondents.

All three network anchors beamed their evening news programs live from Geneva, as did the hosts of the morning news shows. For all their electronic wizardry, the network reporters, like their print colleagues, were reduced to endless conjecturing when the blackout descended over Geneva. So starved were reporters for news that when White House aides handed out the Reagan-Gorbachev joint statement on Thursday, a brawl erupted between a TV producer and a newspaper reporter as they rushed to get copies. Within minutes, however, the hostility was only a memory as the room filled with the hectic clatter of journalists at their trade once again. --By James Kelly. Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Geneva

With reporting by Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Geneva