"THE SELLING OF THE PENTAGON” Making of television documentary and reaction to it described

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32613, 22 May 1971, Page 19

"THE SELLING OF THE PENTAGON” Making of television documentary and reaction to it described

From the reaction that was stirred by the documentary, one would never have guessed its very ordinary editorial origins. Richard Salant, president of C.B.S. News, was watching the rival N.B.C.’s “First Tuesday” ; programme a year or so ago, and was struck by one segment of it which had been made by the Atomic Energy Commission. He thought to himself (or so close associates relate the incident), “Well, my God, does the A.E.C. make its own films? Who said they should do this, and how much of it is going on?”

Eventually, Salant was in no rush—these " things are never done hurriedly by the networks—he assigned Peter Davis to look into the matter of Government public relations. Davis, aged 34, Harvard (1957 Magna Cum Laude), is one of the brighter producers in the television industry, a worthy offspring of the Hollywood writer, Frank Davis,' whose credits include the screenplay for "The Trpin,” and of the late novelist, Tess Slesinger, who had joined her husband in doing the screenplay for "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” 10 weeks Davis spent 10 weeks prowling around various cavernous portions of the bureaucracy in Washington before deciding with Salant’s approval—to use the Pentagon as his case study because “although all of the agencies do a lot of selfserving publicity, the one that has the most influence over the country’s minx, and the one that is the most conspicuous is, of course, the Department of Defence.”

Ten months later, after a production cost of about $lOO,OOO, “The Selling of the Pentagon” was aired over 165 of C.B.S.’s 204 affiliated television stations on February 23. Some of the livelier material was left out—-no mention was made, for example, of either the major who kicked a soldier in the shins 10 keep him from talking to Davjs. or of the Army officer who 'tried to seduce one of C.B.S.’s . girl researchers to find out what the investigation was all about—but it was still an interesting and effective show. But it was hardly a revolutionary programme, and except in television, it broke no new turf. It told of how the Pentagon every year , spends from $3O million to > $l9O million to persuade the , American people that the j military services are doing j some mighty fine work. The Pentagon’s public relations minions were filmed at county fairs, in shopping centres and at staged “warfare clinics” demonstrating j to youngsters and housewives ■ and visiting V.I.P.s that kill- ] ing can be an exciting busi- j ness. . • Earlier reports i Virtually all of the infor- i mation in the show had been ] reported earlier, and much i more fully, in newspapers and ; magazines, or, most cer-li tainly, in books going back i 10 years' to Fred Cook’s “The; Warfare State” and as recently as Senator J. William i Fulbright’s “The Pentagon Propaganda Machine.” But inasmuch as not many people read, and a great manyl peoplg watch television, some of Washington’s most powerful, pro-Pentagon politicians! felt that their interests had; for. the first time been] attacked in a truly significant! and dangerous way. And it: made them very angry. Mr F. Edward Hebert,; chairman of the House Armed Services Committe, said that; he was going to find out howl much the Pentagon spends] with C.B.S. television each] year (he found that it spends: $1,238350 in Army recruiting advertisements alone)— the implication seeming to be that he would try to cut it off. “By deceit” Surely C.B.S. deserved to have its pocket picked, for iti had -turned out “one of thel most un-American things I’ve: ever seen ... on the tube,”: he said. “The greatest disservice of the military I’ve ever seen on television, and I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff. It was filled with *vicious, devious innuendos,’ and besides that,” Mr Hebert concluded with a flourish, “C.B.S. had obtained part of its film footage by deceit.” The Defence Secretary (Mr Melvin Laird), rather restrained, said it was an unprofessional job of reporting. Vice-President Spiro Agnew having wanned up in half a dozen previous speeches condemning the documentary, reached, his splenetic peak at the St Pattrick’s Day banquet at Boston’s Middlesex Club, where he damned the Davis production as “A subtle but vicious broadside against the nation’s defence establishment” He went on to suggest that C.B.S. was

turning out another faked documentary. After all, hadn’t Davis helped create "Hunger in America,” which-showed the shrivelled baby that was supposed to have died from hunger and, some say, really died from something else? And wasn’t C.B.S. the outfit ithat had played along with I the gang that wanted to stage an invasion of Haiti? Mr Agnew neglected to mention that the Federal Communications Commission, after investigating both efforts, praised C.B.S. for the job it did on “hunger” and cleared it of charges that it had tried to rig the invasion. Mr Harley Staggers, a member of the House of Representatives, from West Virginia, first proposed that his special investigating committee would wade into the whole field of television news reporting that is staged, but made to appear spontaneous. Other attacks There were many other attacks, not all relating specifically to “selling” but apparently encouraged by the row developing around it A number of Congressmen and Senators began dusting off some of their favourite anti-television legislation one bill would make it a felony to lie over the airwaves, but it does not specify who the judge of veracity is to be. And Senator Clifford P. Hansen (Republican, Wyoming), put on his own show in room 457 of the Senate office building —a show of clips from C.B.S. and N.B.C. coverage of the Laos invasion and invited the other 544 politicians on Capitol Hill to come by and watch what he hoped would prove that not only are docu-

mentaries not to be trusted, but neither are the nightly news shows. (The turn-out for this wasn’t too good: Besides himself, only one Senator came to watch.) Another run In response to the intense political fire, C.B.S. ran “Selling” again on March 23, partly to let everyone who had inissed the first showing know what the dispute was all about (170 C.B.S. affiliates, an increase of five, ran the programme the second time around) and partly to provide an excuse for airing a “postscript” programme featuring the angry remarks of some of the above-mentioned politicians. Meanwhile, Peter Davis, already aware that there were things to cope with, had flown off for a short vacation in Nassau. But that was disrupted ominously on the morning after Mr Agnew’s Boston speech, when C.B.S. rang up and told him. “Okay, it’s happened. Agnew has (attacked not only your 'broadcast, but you personally, because of ‘Hunger in America,’ and we’ve got to ' get ready. This is going to be a long seige.” : Do people in the network J news business actually, seriously use words like “siege” . when describing their rela- ’ tionship with Federal . officials? Why don’t they just , ignore the critics or, ’ even : more satisfying, respond to ' them in a patronising way? The answer to the first question is yes, absolutely, they feel they are under a pestilential assault. Perhaps * A.B.C. should be exempted ‘ from that statement. ! ! Although Elmer W. Lower, ’[president of A.B.C. news, has talked of the “spectre • of censorship,” the A.B.C. ’vice president, James 1 Hagerty, who was Eisen--1 bower’s press secretary, says > that he feels no pressure ’ from the Nixon Administra- - tion and even if he did, “We - can live with it” i f Something new r Officials of the two giant - networks, GB.S. and N.8.C., i however, are not so - accommodating. Julian Goodiman, president of N.B.C. and > I Frank Stanton, president of s C.B.S. agree that the kind of 3 heavy-handed Government si attempt; to influence net- - work news during the last - two years is something new > to their experience. Sorne- - times Lyndon Johnson used t to blister their ears on the s telephone. “You know John- - son’s style,” said Stanton, a “When he’s exercised he s isn’t a very quiet persuader.”

And sometimes he imperiously summoned the network brass to the White House for an in-person dressing-down. But never before, say Goodman and Stanton, has there been an administration that publicly attempted to humiliate and whip the networks, into line. Do network officials actually feel that White House spokesmen have no right to criticise publicly what the newscasters say? In moments of extreme irritation, some will take that position. Licensed press As for the question about why the networks don’t just shrug it off, the beginning of an answer comes from the N.B.C. executive vice-president, Mr David Adams: “You haven’t seen this sort of attack levelled at the ‘New York Times,’ with this sort of drum fire, although I think the ‘Times’ has reported the Indo-China war in its own terms, print, much in the same way we have reported it with pictures and motion and sound. But there haven’t been daily and weekly attacks on the ‘Times,’ and nobody has cut out the stories and pasted them up and said, ‘Look what they’re doing,’ and invited Congressmen to come and look. Now, that’s a difference. And the reason there is that difference is, we’re a licensed press.” What he means is, nobody yet has figured out how to make licences and freedom of the press compatible. Although the networks themselves are not licensed by the Federal Government, each network owns five

major television stations i which are worth many i millions of dollars in equity ■ —it is almost impossible to 1 put a long-term price tag on i these stations—which are i licensed by the Federal : Communications Commis-: sion. And the supposed peril 1 of these licences, which 1 must be renewed every three 1 years, is something the net- 1 work lawyers never, never . allow their corporate ] masters to forget. Actually, too much is * made of this peril. To get a 1 licence from the F.C.C. a 1 station has to submit a ' rough idea of how much it ; intends to feed the community in the way of entertainment, talk, news and 1 that abstract blob called public service. Quality questions So long as it lives up to ! its promises in a very general way, it will have no , problem getting its licence [ renewed. It can run the dullest talk shows, the most pathetically trivial enter- 1 tainment, the same rerun . movies week after week, and ' news that hardly skims the ' surface —the F.C.C. won’t care. The F.C.C. avoids all i questions of quality. None of the hundreds of television stations—neither those owned by networks, nor those owned by others —has ever lost its licence because of its news coverage, yet the very thought of risking one of those golden licences for something as transient as a hard-hitting news story turns the corporate heart to jelly. So when Vice-President Agnew says publicly that “the views of this fraternity (television network journalists) do not represent the views of America” and “perhaps it is tithe that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation”—the corporate eat picks up that word “made” which automatically starts the awareness that a majority of the members on the F.C.C. now belongs to the same party that controls the White House, and the : network men sit up a bit , straighter. I j Protest letters t Letters of protest from f members of Congress are t treated very courteously by - network officials, who assign t staff members to answer r every point of inquiry, no - matter how asinine. I Heavy-duty “congressional : relations” offices are main- - tained by every network. . And critical inquiries from 3 powerful pressure groups ’ that could swing weight with

the White House and Congress are also answered with elaborate care, because, as Goodman says “your problem is not only with existing regulation but with what Congress might do in response to a feeling that it should clamp down.” Correctly or not, many in the industry feel that the Administration —as well as its allies in Congress—is using the licence threat as a club to get more favourable news coverage. Salant says, “there is coercion and intimidation here, for Government intervention and coercion can take a multitude of sinister forms other than naked censorship.” From the networks point of view, perhaps the most impressive techniques of intimidation have been these: Forcing the news ‘departments into enormously costly and time-consum-ing defences of their programmes. Attempting to create a kind of civil war between the networks and their affiliates. Maintaining a constant war of nerves with both the networks and their affiliates, letting them know that somebody with the power to punish is watching from Washington. Which brings us back to the siege Peter Davis was talking about. The drill is well remembered by Fred Friendly, now a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a Ford Foundation official, but for many years a news director at C.B.S. “It’s a game”

With the late Edward R. Murrow, he practically invented the documentary. “You get an eight-page accusation about something controversial in the programme,

and you send back a 20-page rebuttal. This inspires a new 40-page response from the lawyers and lobbyists for some outfit who have nothing else to do. And that takes you 65 pages to answer, and you get back a new 73-page list of accusations. They know what they’re doing—they know—it’s a game with them.” But it's no game to the journalists. The aftermath of “Hunger in America”—another of the prize-winning documentaries Agnew denounced in Boston as a fake —cost C.B.S. an estimated six figures to defend. Davis was associate producer of the show, Martin Carr the producer. “Hunger” perhaps the most powerful documentary since the exposure of the abuse of migrant workers in “Harvest of Shame,” almost a decade ago—revealed that the United States Department of Agriculture was scuttling its own food-for-the-poor programmes, with the encouragement of the- Congressional farm committees. The G-men accumulated an endless list of innuendos, all of which Carr had to respond to. The dispute over “selling” has plunged Davis into an identical routine. At the time I saw him, about three weeks after the Agnew speech in Boston, Davis had already turned out about 70 pages of rebuttal and responses to flak coming from the Pentagon and Congress and some newspapers and C.B.S.’s own lawyers. There is no let-up in sight. Davis thinks he may still be working at his defence next year. “Snipped, glued” One of the things the Pentagon has done is recruit some editorial support both from the trade press and the regular dailies. The “Air Force Space Digest” made some nasty cracks about shows that were “snipped” and “glued” together—but , that could be expected from . a magazine supported by the , military-industrial establish- ; ment. What really rattled the : network people was the series of editorials in the “Washington Post” that said maybe the Pentagon had a point—maybe a couple of the i quotes used in the show had : indeed been juggled to the ' point of distortion. 1 Feeling skewered from ' behind, Davis raged: “Did > you see the ‘Post’s’ yakking , about our using doctored i transcripts? And yet the so- ■ called ‘prepared text’ the • Pentagon gave the ‘Post’ i was itself incomplete. The > ‘Post’ did nothing but rei write a Pentagon hand-out

without even a lazy phone call to those of us who worked on the transcript to find out if the Pentagon’s outline was an accurate transcription of what we filmed.” (Responding from the “Washington Post,” an editorial writer, Meg Greenfield, said that no hand-out had been rewritten, and that,

in three telephone calls to C.B.S. to ask for its side of the argument, she did get as close to the programme as a narrator, Roger Mudd, who said that the Pentagon allegations weren’t worth responding to.) “War of nerves” From the Government’s side, the “war of nerves” is fought by letting the stations know they are being observed—Mr Herbert G. Klein, the White House Director of Communications, and his deputy, Mr Al Snyder, are very adept at this. When a major Nixon speech is coming up, Messrs Klein and Snyder have been known to get on the telephone to 20 or 30 stations

and prod them a bit—and afterward, there might be another call to find out if the stations intend to editorialise, and if so, what they intend to Say. Transcripts sought After Nixon’s war policy speech on November 3, 1969, Dean Burch, chairman of the F.C.C., telephoned network presidents to get transcripts of their commentaries. This was widely interpreted as a proxy action for Nixon himself; Burch, a former chairman of the Republican national committee and a close friend of the President, is frequently consulted by the White House on matters relating to the broadcast industry, though the F.C.C. is supposed to be an independent agency and outwardly tries to maintain that air. Jittery industry men put a special interpretation on what Salant calls “Big brother watching us with counters and stop-watches.” Part of this is the daily news digest plunked on the President’s desk at 8 a.m. sharp each day. Those who have seen the digests say that they contain little comments like “Mr Brinkley, with his customary sarcasm . . .” etc. Sometimes the attitude overflows and causes the White House to intrude as it did recently upon the Dick Cavett evening talk show. S.S.T. vote Apparently under pressure from Mr Klein’s deputy, Mr Snyder, A.B.C. executives induced Cavett to let one of the Administration’s proS.S.T. technicians go on the show and tout the wonders of the supersonic plane before the issue of its funding came to a final vote in the Senate. Mr Snyder, in an interview with a columnist, acknowledged that he telephoned A.B.C. officials and “suggested” this change in the format of the show because the White House felt Cavett had had too many anti-S.S.T. guests. Mr Snyder denied that the White House clocks all programmes—including even entertainment shows —to see what , publli: issues are mentioned, how long they are talked about, and what opinions are favoured. No, he said, he just happened to be watching the Cavett show. To many network officials, the worst thing about the current struggle with Government is the discrediting of the news product, as a product. Like everything else on television—soap operas, sex,

song and dance, conversation —news in a nice way is also viewed as a product, to be sold both to advertisers and the public. The N.B.C. executive vice-president, Mr Adams, puts it this way: "Broadcasters live by their acceptance by viewers.” If an atmosphere is set in this country that persuades

people not to believe in television news shows because “They are all slanted and because television newsmen art by and large left of centre and pink and anti-Adminis-tration, that atmosphere will grow and television will lose part of its credibility. If it loses some of that, it loses some of its whole operation. “These things proceed, tiny step by tiny step, each one almost invisible. If people think the merchant’s i news has turned sour, they may get the idea other items on the shelf have spoiled, too.” The official ‘‘phony baby” dogma after the "hunger” show is a pretty good example of what rattles the networks, but an even better

example was the Government’s counter-offensive after the showing on Cronkite’s evening news, November 3, 1969, of a South Vietnamese soldier stabbing a prisoner to death while United States military advisers looked on. The Pentagon was furious. So were some of the White House people, who began privately telling favoured print journalists they thought the show was a hoax: “Take our word for it, the prisoner being stabbed was already dead—or, if not that, then it was all just a training exercise, nothing for real—or, if not that, then instead of American advisers it was probably an Australian caper.” These leaked suspicions widely reported in such cooperative papers as the “Des Moines Register.” Conkite’s method After six months of this, C.B.S. decided to talk back on another newscast. Cronkite turned over seven minutes to a correspondent, Don Webster, who, having laboriously retraced his steps, had film on everything: An interview with the Vietnamese soldier who had done the stabbing, blow-up shots of the insignia on the helicopter wings to prove that if was United States, not Aussie soldiers looking on, evidence that it was a very real mission, not a training exercise quite enough to justify Cronkite’s closing remarks “We broadcast the original story in the belief it told something about the nature of the war in Vietnam. What has happened since then tells something about the Government and its relation with news media which carry stories the Government finds disagreeable.” But with only 30 minutes —minus advertising time—to cover the news of the world each night, no network can afford to devote many seven-minute fragments to rehashing its old news to prove authenticity. There is also a limit, some believe, to how much of a drubbing television journalists and their bosses can take from the Government before they begin to give a little, to hold back the tough shots, to give even less depth to their coverage than is customary. Zeal for news Without exception, the top executives and news directors of every network insist that the constant abrasion from the Government has not worn away any of their news-dispensing zeal. Still, it is easy to find

people who feel this could be a consequence. Despite all of management’s disclaimers about not giving in to the pressures at the top, some in the industry see things, differently. Of all the capitulations, none has made the networks seem more pitiful than their co-operation with the Justice Department or just about anybody else who approaches with a subpoena. The most painful episode was when the Justice Department took away the film Mike Wallace had done in private sessions with Eldridge Cleaver' and other Black Panthers in Algiers. To get the Panthers’ permission to sit in on their skull sessions, Wallace had guaranteed that no Government agent would get his hands on it Then in what C.B.S. executives now blushingly identify as “a terrific amount of confusion” men from the office of the Attorney General (Mr John Mitchell) simply walked in and walked away with the goods. Now that word of that has got around, network journalists are reported to be finding it more difficult to get people to tell their secrets off the record. “Greatest favour” However, in doing this, the Government may have done the networks their greatest favour They might have gone on indefinitely taking all the other guff from the F.C.C., from Congressional investigators, from irate pressure groups and from the White House. But when the Justice Department began looting their files of material no legitimate print journalist would think of surrendering to a court order, the network journalists, prodded by embarrassment, decided to take a stand. Or at least some of them seem to have decided to. When Mr .Staggers had a subpoena served on C. 8.5., demanding all of its used and unused films, plus notes and a list of everyone its journalists had talked to in preparing “The Selling of the Pentagon,” he explained that he only wanted to see if the C.B.S. had done a fair job of editing its material. “How we edit” And Stanton and Salant promptly announced that that was exactly what they had no intention of putting up with. “This,” says Salant, “is the place to tell them that how we edit is none of their business. I suppose they could bring contempt against the witness who says that I hope it’s me.” Stanton, too, does not appear to be the gaol-bird type, says he is definitely willing to serve time if necessary to protect C.B.S.’s news . material. N.B.C. officials have announced that they support C.B.S.’s position all the way. So, television fans, you’ve got your happy ending after all. Maybe. This adversity and harassment that the networks are subjected to may do the trick. Just as Christians had to be fed to lions for the sport of Romans in order to transform an obscure sect into a world-wide religion, the martyring of a few producers and executives may, by a latter-day miracle, inspire television to become a real journalistic medium.

The television programme, "The Selling of the Pentagon,” concerned alleged public relations efforts practised by the Pentagon. The programme caused widespread comment and some criticism In the United States. Allegations were made about the accuracy and methods of compiling the film. The United States Government has produced material which it says shows that part of the film was put together in such a way as to mislead the viewer. In this article, Robert Sherrill, Washington correspondent Of the "Nation” describes the making of the film, the reaction to it, and the alleged pressures applied by the United States Government to make the television networks give a more favourable impression of Government activities. The article comes from the New York Times News Service, through the NXP.A. A United States Information Service article presenting Government evidence about the validity of the programme will be printed on Monday, "The Seiling of the Pentagon,” CHTV3, Sunday, May 23, 5.48 p.m. \