The Image Factory

This book, Feeding the Beast by Kenneth T Walsh, who has covered the presidency since 1986 for the US News & World Report, chronicles this passage in an anecdotal manner. Feeding the beast is the phrase used by Washington insiders to describe regular news hand-outs for the media, which turn on them and eat them up if kept hungry. Walsh focusses primarily on the relationship between the presidency and the media and comes to four specific conclusions: the media has too much attitude, it is too negative, it rushes to judgement about events, trends and people, and it is losing contact with everyday America. The point which Walsh has missed (for reasons which we will see later): obsession with trivia.

 

Walsh quotes a correspondent with the Boston Globe to explain why things have turned out this way: The news cycle runs so quickly now that objectivity is becoming a liability. News from a 2 a.m presidential press conference may be covered live on CNN, digested by talk radio during drive time, highlighted by local news and then the network evening news, discussed on America online, mentioned by the 11 o clock news, chewed on by Nightline, and referred to by the morning talk shows before any of my readers sit down at the breakfast table and pick up the Globe the next morning. To make my story fresh, I have to look for an angle and an angle, by definition, is subjective. And since the prevailing ethos of journalism is to be sceptical about sources of power, the angle is almost always critical.

But as much as the media, it is the presidency that is on trial in this book which comes up with many amusing anecdotes. Reagan, says Walsh, developed a technique of walking to and from his helicopter when its engines were roaring, and letting reporters shout their questions like poorly trained seals. The journalists, of course, looked like hectoring, obnoxious fools, which was fine by White House. Reagan could pretend not to hear the questions he didnt like but could answer those for which his aides had given him clever one-liners.

If Reagan played the big media like a maestro and Bush never really got a handle on it (his press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, told the National Press Club: There arent enough stories out of the White House to keep one honest person doing an honest days work), Bill Clinton tried to go over the heads of the big networks and newspapers and reach out to people directly. This strategy worked during Campaign 1992 when at places like Iowa and Illinois, the Clinton team would abandon the national press and go direct for the local TV. Clinton told radio and television correspondents once: You know why I can stiff you on press conferences? Because Larry King liberated me by giving me to the American people directly.

According to Walsh, Clinton, left to himself, would have been friendly with the media, but is influenced by Hillary, who is deeply suspicious of it. She is quoted as saying: I find it very difficult to understand the dissection of bits and pieces of people, the categorizations of `Aha! Now I know! filling in some fact that, unrelated to any other context of some persons life, is expected to be revealing!

Even the Great Communicator had trouble understanding the demands of the media. Reagan once wanted to slip out to Bethesda Naval Medical Centre to let doctors check him for colon and prostate cancer, but media strategist Michael Deaver told him: Sure, we could slip you into the back of a car with a hat and a raincoat on and get you out of the White House, but in fifteen minutes, world would get out, the stock market would drop, and the Soviets would go on alert! Reagan threw his pencil down on his big mahogany desk and exploded: You want me to go into the press room, drop my pants and show