Reporters Have 'A Vested Interest In Chaos'

By Bruce Morton/CNN

WASHINGTON (Nov. 19) -- The war between presidents and press is very old. Thomas Jefferson, who once said he would favor newspapers over government, later said nothing the papers printed could be believed.

President Bill Clinton's press secretary, Mike McCurry, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told The New Yorker that Clinton believes Washington reporters "have never been able to accept him for what he is. That is why from the minute he arrived here they tried to destroy him."

McCurry says Clinton thinks Washington despises his Arkansas origins. But he is a Rhodes Scholar and a Yalie, and many in Washington remember an Arkansan named J. William Fulbright as one of the Senate's best minds.

Jody Powell was Jimmy Carter's White House press secretary. "President Carter, President Nixon, President Ford, President Bush, President Clinton, they just don't like the press, do they?" Powell said. "Well, of course, they don't like the press. Why should they like the press? In fact, generally speaking, almost nobody likes the press."

Most presidents get mad at the press sometimes. John Kennedy, whom White House reporters protected more than they would now, canceled a newspaper subscription out of anger.

Generally, presidents think reporters should sing in the choir and carry the message. Reporters say yes, but we should add some context, too. If this is the president's third position on this issue this month, we should say so.

Presidents and press secretaries think the reporters spend too much time on inside baseball: staff infighting, campaign tactics, polls. They're probably right about that.

But if Clinton really believes the Washington press corps "tried to destroy him" from the minute he arrived, he is wrong. Reporters, an old Washington hand once said, "have a vested interest in chaos." That's true. We love rowdy debates and heated arguments; they make good stories. But that's different from a deliberate attack on a president or a candidate.

Said Powell: "There is less of a mutual understanding and even some degree of respect between those people on the political, government, side and those people in journalism than there once was. What this process needs is for everybody to be held accountable for what they do and that there not be any toleration for either journalists or politicians blaming their shortcomings on others."

Richard Nixon felt like Clinton. "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore," he said after losing the governorship of California in 1962.

He was wrong, of course. Nixon got a lot of news coverage after that and got elected president twice.

Clinton's Temper Gets The Better Of Him -- Aug. 2, 1996

AllPolitics home page

Reporters Have 'A Vested Interest In Chaos'

Related Story: