WHITE HOUSE CUTS FLOW OF INFORMATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100020020-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: June 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17 :
ARTI "I.Z
ON racy
White House
Cuts Flow of
Information
News Media Treated
As an Alien Force
By Eleanor Randolph
Washington Post staff writer
Almost five years ago, Robert M.
Entman of Duke University wrote a
guidebook on how President Rea-
gan, then newly elected, could
"tame" what he called "The Imperial
Media."
Entman suggested, among other
devices, keeping most government
information officers "in the dark,"
discouraging them from mingling
socially with journalists and using
discipline to keep free-lance leakers
from getting to the news media.
The Entman formula reads like "a
blueprint for the Teflon presiden-
cy," in the words of A. Lawrence
Chickering, executive editor of the
Institute for Contemporary Studies,
which sponsored the Entman study.
And although some of Entman's
advice was off the mark (he sug-
gested, for example, that a presi-
dent "not make a fetish of getting
on television"), his system also in-
cluded the important suggestion
that a new president could "tame
White House beat reporting by de-
creasing reporters' expectations of
full access." A new or popular pres-
ident could "take advantage of the
country's growing preference for
strong leadership to legitimize the
approach," he wrote.
Only a few White House officials
acknowledge knowing about the
Entman formula, but Edwin Meese
III, who ran the Reagan transition
in 1980 and is now attorney gen-
eral, was said to have used the ad-
vice as an early Bible, and former
White House communications direc-
tor David R. Gergen has said he
openly opposed it.
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Now, however, some reporters
covering the Reagan administration
say Entman appears to have written
some of the golden rules for dealing
with the news media.
Mainly, the Reagan team is less
afraid to say "no" to reporters. Of-
ten politely, but sometimes defiant-
ly, aides refuse to give information
that journalists demand, even when
they invoke the public's right to
know or the clout of the nation's
most powerful journalistic institu-
tions.
Riding a wave of public antipathy
for the media-and in some cases
encouraging it-the Reagan admin-
istration appears to have succeeded
to an unusual degree in selecting
the information that goes to the me-
dia instead of reacting to reporters'
queries.
"Every administration I have
been associated with has tried to fo-
cus public attention on a given sub-
ject, to expose the president in the
best light," White House spokesman
Larry Speakes said last week. "Any
corporation, including media cor-
porations, do much the same thing,
try to present their corporations in
the best light.
"I would say this administration
has been the most accessible as any
so far as far as senior policy makers
being willing to talk to the press on
a regular basis and even a spot
news basis," he said, citing the 30
minutes a day that White House
chief of staff Donald T. Regan sets
aside for reporters.
From the other side of the White
House news room a different story
comes.
"They pick the story every day.
They pick the one that will almost
invariably wind up on the nightly
news, and that's the one they an-
swer questions on or give access to
information about," said Helen
Thomas of United Press Interna-
tional, dean of the White House
press corps.
"A lot of events, we're absolutely
blacked out, and if you don't like it,
too bad." she added. "The whole at-
titude is, 'We will tell you what we
think you should know.' "
Although some journalists
strongly disagree with Thomas and
see the Reagan administration as no
different from its predecessors,
many others feel as she does.
"There has been a consistent and
organized effort on the part of this
administration to reduce the flow of
government information, beginning
with what they consider secret but
extended far beyond that," says Bill
Kovach, Washington editor of The
New York Times.
"There is no area of government
where information is not harder to
get for us here, harder to get now
than it was when I was here in the
Nixon and Ford years," Kovach
added.
"Their whole attitude is that gov-
ernment information belongs'to the
government," he said.
Kovach, like others, acknowl-
edged that such complaints might
be viewed as the latest "whining" of
the media.,
And some reporters get around
the tactics, and- do report some of
the crucial internal debates or em-
barrassments that officials would
prefer to keep beneath the serene
surface.
Moreover, the Reagan adminis-
tration has had its share of eat kern.
In the president's first term. bat-
tling White House aides lled
many of their secret battles onto
the front pages of newspapers. Big
secrets like the c an estine oper-
ation to su ort Nicaraguan coun-
terrevo utionaries also leaked. The
Reagan administration cannot be
,described as totally closed off from
ptf lic-or media-scrutiny.
Still, the attitude toward the me-
dia and the level of discipline of this
administration to get out its story
appear to be on a different scale
from its predecessors.
In contrast to reporting during
Previous presidencies, journalists
said they often have less access to
that mid-level of the bureaucracy
where specialists can explain or am-
plify decisions made at the top.
"The people hardest to get to
now are the worker bees," said ABC
correspondent John McWethy, who
covered the Defense Department
until moving to the State Depart=
4inued
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/17: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100020020-7