Chaos-Creator-in-Chief Inflames Passions over Immigration, Leaks, and, Naturally, Chaos

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Journalism in the Age of Trump

I came of age professionally at the dawn of the Watergate era. While studying for a master’s degree in newspaper journalism, my Syracuse University classmates and I met with Jeb Magruder, president Richard Nixon’s re-election committee head in early 1972, just months before the Watergate break-in, two years before Magruder would plead guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, to defraud the United States, and to illegally eavesdrop on the Democratic Party national headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

During our first summer of matrimony, in 1973, Gilda spent most of her days watching the Senate Watergate hearings. Lowell Weicker Jr. of Connecticut gained national prominence during the hearings as a Republican critic of Nixon. I interviewed Weicker at his Greenwich home on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. We made national news when I quoted him asserting he would not try to capitalize on his new-found prominence by running for president in 1976, though he did try to mount a presidential bid in 1980.

In the years following Watergate and the bravura reporting of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, not to mention their celluloid alter-egos Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, it seemed every young person graduating college wanted to be an investigative reporter, someone who toppled the high and mighty. It didn’t matter if their chosen targets presided in Washington or Podunk, Indiana. What mattered was the press had to show that it was supreme.

For the most part the nation benefitted from such zeal, though excesses did occur, such as the intrusive, destructive coverage of Gary Hart and his non affair with Donna Rice, which submarined his presidential hopes in 1988.

Relations between the press and presidents (and would-be presidents) are rarely absent of acrimony. Reporters are a skeptical, cynical lot, always looking for the real story behind any presidential action. They bristle at any attempt to corral their activity. Administrations, on the other hand, are the ultimate public relations practitioners. Media access is to be restricted and managed.

Which brings us to media coverage in the age of Trump. The Internet has vastly expanded the number of bodies able to disseminate news, real and fake. The biggest body of all belongs to Donald J. Trump and his peripatetic fingers.

The twit-in-chief has upended traditional news distribution routes. His team has hinted of changes to the daily briefings in the White House press room. Indeed, the very room itself may become extinct.

It is a strategy to bypass traditional media that Trump believes is biased against him. He may be right about the bias claim, but he is fooling himself if he seriously believes upsetting the press room applecart will stifle critical reporting and analysis of his administration. If anything, it will galvanize real reporters to probe deeper.

The contretemps over Buzzfeed’s publishing the contents of a questionably accurate dossier of behavior by Trump while in Russia several years ago is the latest example of the press pushing the limits of journalistic decorum.

Yet, it is the height of chutzpah for a president-elect who uses Twitter bullying tactics, the retweeting of falsehoods and innuendo and near total disregard for the truth to complain about his coverage and portrayal in the media.

I suspect Trump is not very well read, but he probably knows the saying, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”

He might also be acquainted with another proverb journalists embrace: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Ben Bradlee Inspired Many a Journalist

Don’t count me among the legions inspired to become journalists by Ben Bradlee and his then-young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It’s not that I didn’t admire this trio of Washington Post muckrakers. It’s just that I had decided to become a reporter three years before Watergate entered the public consciousness.

My muse was another editor at a different Post, along with the writing behind the exposure in Chicago of official corruption, albeit the fictional kind. 

I was motivated by James Wechsler, the bow-tied editor of The New York Post. Now, don’t be put off by your thoughts about today’s New York Post. Back in 1969, The Post was still a bastion of liberal, progressive thought wrapped inside standard police-fire-and-general-mayhem tabloid fare upfront and a superlative sports section in the back.

The death earlier this week of Bradlee, retired executive editor of The Washington Post, has brought forth the expected tributes about his defining role in the paper’s dogged investigation of the Watergate break-in (initially criticized by Republicans, a big shrug-of-the-shoulders by almost everyone else) and his eventual triumph and vindication with the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. It is not too far a reach to state, as others have, that Bradlee-Woodward-Bernstein begat a new generation of journalists, each seeking to leave his or her mark by exposing and toppling members of the power elite. 

I started my pursuit of a career in journalism a full three years before Watergate after being brought up reading The New York Post every day. As a youngster I would read the comics—Nancy, Mutt & Jeff, Dennis the Menace. As I grew older, the sports columnists Maury Allen, Vic Ziegel, Milton Gross, Paul Zimmerman and Leonard Schechter romanced my interests in baseball and football. Next I delved into the social columnists, the Entertainment Tonight-Perez Hilton-TMZ of their day: Leonard Lyons, Earl Wilson, Sidney Skolsky, whose signature line in every weekend celebrity profile was whether she or he slept in the raw, an impressionable image for a hormonally stimulated early teenager. 

Finally, with more maturity, I absorbed the political mavens: Wechsler, Max Lerner, Mary McGrory, Art Buchwald, William Buckley, Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, Murray Kempton, and a newcomer, Pete Hamill, a counter to Jimmy Breslin’s man-of-the-street prose in The Daily News. 

It was a column by Wechsler, a review of a 1969 revival of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play The Front Page that ignited my interest in being a reporter, an upgrade from my position as editor of Calling Card, a Brooklyn College newspaper. 

On one of our early dates I took Gilda to see The Front Page revival starring Bert Convy and Robert Ryan. To this day I revel in watching two movie adaptations of the play—the 1931 film starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien, and the 1940 adaptation, His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell—about star reporter Hildy Johnson’s desire to leave the Chicago Examiner to get married, all the while trying to overcome the machinations of managing editor Walter Burns to keep Johnson on the payroll. Along the way they expose the corruption of the mayor and sheriff who want to execute an innocent man. 

I don’t mean to suggest my life as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor and publisher matched the frenzied excitement of The Front Page. But I had my share of stimulation and sensationalism. During my time as a reporter for The New Haven Register, I covered the largest industrial arson in the nation’s history, interviewed U.S. senator Lowell Weicker during a break from his duties on the Watergate Committee, profiled a survivor of an Eastern Airlines crash in the Everglades and a pilot who vied with Charles Lindbergh to be the first to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic, to name a few memorable stories.

When I interviewed to be a field editor on Nation’s Restaurant News in Manhattan in 1977, the group vice president coyly asked me if I preferred a job at The New York Post, by then a Rupert Murdoch property. Just say the word and he’d call a friend there. I resisted the bait, telling him only after experiencing the job as a business-to-business writer would I be able to determine if I found the task rewarding. I must have, as I stayed with the company for 32 years, all but that first year on Chain Store Age.

It was rewarding, both financially and emotionally. To be sure, I rarely covered politicians, except when they got involved in minimum wage or other issues affecting the retail and restaurant industries. So when candidates for my Chain Store Age staff would inevitably ask for my comparison between the gratification of working for the consumer press and a trade journal, I would respond that my ego was stroked by getting to know many of the men and women who, every day through their stores, catalogs and Internet sites, touched the lives of most Americans. My magazine also provided insight into many merchandise and systems suppliers that have transformed the way we shop. I was fortunate, I would tell them, to work in a publishing house that allowed, encouraged actually, probing editorial that dissected retail strategies and exposed them when they didn’t work.

We didn’t topple any retail empires. No president, even of a retail company, resigned because of our reporting. That was not our mission. But I take pride and comfort in what Fred Barbash, now the Morning Mix editor of The Washington Post, wrote back in January 2000. Under the headline, “Investing tip: Read the trade publications,” Barbash repeatedly referenced an issue of Chain Store Age to detail how article after article informed his knowledge of the stock market. “When it comes to getting ideas for buying stocks before the whole wide world knows about them, when it comes to resources that cost little or nothing compared with some of the pricey newsletters, I think you can’t beat … www.chainstoreage.com.”  

Homeland and Other Worries

So here's my problem with Showtime’s Homeland, now that Gilda and I are watching the DVD of the first season. The suspected Al Qaeda plot the CIA and FBI are investigating—a sniper attack against the president as he leaves or boards his Marine One helicopter at Reagan National Airport—is based on erroneous fact. Air Force One, the only plane the president flies in, does not use Reagan. It flies in and out of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, nowhere near the Virginia house Abu Nasir's terrorist cell bought and planned to use in their assassination attempt because its roof has a direct view of the helicopter landing pad at Reagan. 

There are no doubt other points we could dissect but this one is troubling. You'd think the CIA and FBI would know the president doesn't use Reagan National Airport. Maybe the dilemma is cleared up in the last two episodes of season one which we hope to view this weekend. I hope so, because otherwise I really like this show and can’t wait for the second season DVD to become available.

Fox Hunting: Homeland's plot arc has a former prisoner of war suspected by a CIA agent of being a sleeper terrorist turned by Al Qaeda during his eight years of captivity. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brady is elected to Congress, where he can wreak havoc from within the political system. My niece in England sent me a link to an article in the Guardian about Rupert Murdoch’s failed attempt to co-opt the American presidential race from within. 

It's by Carl Bernstein who has experience in these matters (for those too young to know, he’s the Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate reporting fame). Here are two links, the first to Bernstein’s article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/20/bernstein-murdoch-ailes-petreaus-presidency), the second to the actual voice tape of the conversation between General Petraeus and K.T. McFarland of Fox News referred to by Bernstein that was obtained by Bob Woodward. Keep in mind this conversation happened a year before Petraeus’ downfall from his alleged affair

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/petraeus-in-2011-fox-news-interview-im-not-running-for-president/2012/12/03/c0aa0c72-3d6d-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_video.html). 

Signature Moment: Ordinary Americans always strive to identify with their politicians. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. My point is, the brouhaha over Treasury Secretary nominee Jacob J. Lew’s signature—a series of connected loops looking much like a Slinky on its side—has me identifying directly with the man whose scrawl would appear on all paper currency should he be confirmed by the Senate.

I for one can’t find fault with his illegible writing. Mine is what I call my executive signature, stroked so quickly that only, and just barely at that, can you make out the “M” of my first name. Sometimes when I sign legal documents I slow down, but that causes a problem, as when I go to the bank to gain access to our safety deposit box. I can never remember which signature I am supposed to match. 

My poor penmanship must be in my genes, for Dan as well has a signature where only the “D” is legible. I used to think Ellie’s signature was decipherable, but since she got married and changed her middle and last names, she too has channeled me, and I know what she’s supposed to be writing. 

Blame, or Praise, Me: If you're wondering why there hasn't been any snow this month, I have an explanation. In my quest for the perfect snow shovel I recently bought a wheeled shovel, good for up to six inches of flakes. I eagerly awaited the next snowfall to test out my purchase. 

Naturally the power(s) to be have thwarted my ability to test drive this model by spritzing rain on us versus snow. I hope you all appreciate this gift I have given you, unless, of course, you like shoveling snow and skidding along on snow-covered streets.

Recalls From Hell: Here are headlines over press releases you really don’t want to have to issue if you run a company:

“Columbia Sportswear Reannounces Its Recall of Batteries Sold With Jackets Due To Fire Hazard”

“High-Pressure Scuba Diving Air Hoses Recalled by A-Plus Marine Due to Drowning Hazard”