Newswatch

By Thomas Griffith

Most of the Washington press corps has long since grown resigned, fatalistic or cautious about its situation. But not Boston-based New York Times Columnist Anthony Lewis, who began an angry column: "Ronald Reagan has never been more breathtaking as a politician than in the weeks since Reykjavik. He has pictured failure as success, black as white, incompetence as standing up to the Russians. And according to the polls, Americans love the performance."

In Year Six of the Reagan Administration, nobody brings up those old Watergate-era worries about an all-powerful press, able to make or break Presidents. Many journalists instead wonder whether the press is really doing its job and whether it is too soft on Reagan. Polls commissioned by the Los ! Angeles Times found that four out of five people think the press is fair to Reagan. As many believe the Government frequently manipulates the way journalists report the news. Says Media Specialist Michael J. Robinson of Georgetown University, adviser for the latest poll, "It was a surprise to us to find that the public is more likely to see the press as wimpish than imperial."

That statement created a stir when the Times Mirror Co. recently sponsored a press forum in Washington. Jack Nelson, the outspoken bureau chief for the Times, said, "I think there is a real contempt for the press within the Reagan Administration, and I think it starts at the top." Nelson feels his colleagues are insufficiently aggressive in covering the Administration, "and I don't think television is aggressive at all."

ABC White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson, with his barracks voice, is a flamboyant exception to this charge, but any steady watcher of the evening news has to be aware of how cozily television reporters imply that they have inside information when they are merely repeating the Administration line. Many reporters believe no previous Administration has been so efficient and disciplined at controlling the flow of information, concealing internal dissent, going after leakers and shutting down access: all to get its own version across. As Marvin Kalb of NBC's Meet the Press told the forum, "This particular Administration begins its day by deciding how it will look on television at 7 o'clock that night. All activity at the White House stops at 6:59, while the three buttons are hit so that they can see the success of their work in the course of the day."

In a world of carefully staged events, only the infrequent televised press conference remains potentially risky for the President. At the forum, few seemed outraged when Press Secretary Larry Speakes suggested that this once celebrated jousting has outlived its usefulness. Speakes has been experimenting with one-on-one or small group meetings with the President. Fine for the invited journalists, rejoined Donaldson, but the public would lose "the only time that they get to see Ronald Reagan use his mind, actually to hear a question, think about it, try to recall what it was that people suggested to him he say, or that he wants to say, and say it." Otherwise, in the President's prepared speeches, "when the red light goes on, no one can match him. He looks at that TelePrompTer; he reads that speech; he is, as he was trained for 45 years in Hollywood, a gangbusters performer."

All this implied a grudging admission that the press has been bypassed by Reagan. Another panelist, Jimmy Carter's press secretary, Jody Powell, credits Reagan's success less to his style than to the fact that the press corps follows the election returns and the polls: "Journalism in this town is much more likely, for a variety of reasons, to be tough on a President when he's dragging one leg and bleeding from one nostril than if he's riding high." The trouble is, said Donaldson, when the press reports news unfavorable to Reagan, "a very large segment of the American public clearly says 'So what?' " The press corps seems as prudently muted as Democratic candidates who refused to attack Reagan even when he campaigned against them in last week's election. If this hardly seems a profile of courage, it has proved, for politicians and journalists alike, a useful strategy. Be careful on taking so popular a President head on, but do go about your job.