Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 1975)
Ford's news summary more objective than predecessor's By MAYRON WALDMAN (C) 1974, Newday WASHINGTON—The most ex clusive newspaper in the U.S. has no editorials, no advertising, no comics, no letters to the editor and a circulation of 158. But its subscribers are a group that would make any editor proud. The Paper, which comes hot off the xerox machine six days a week, does not even have a catchy name. It simply is called: “The President’s Daily News Briefing.” Gerald Ford Likes it so much that he takes three copies—one delivered to him by a secret ser vice agent, another plopped on his desk in the oval office and a third placed in the situation room. The other papers go to folks like mem bers of the cabinet, the kitchen cabinet and White House aides. •t's a publication that is not as lively as it used to be. In the days of Richard Nixon, it was so spicy that reporters counted them selves fortunate if they were able to catch a glimpse of it. For what it does is capsulize the editorials and stories of 75 newspapers, about 20 magazines and three television networks for the Pres ident. During the last years of the Nixon era, the news was such that the editors of the summary felt compelled to comment on the items they included. They de scribed stories as fair or partial and used phrases like “NBC did us no favors." For Philip Warden, the current editor of the news summary, there is none of the vivd writing that characterized the paper when Patrick Buchanan was in charge of preparing it for Nixon. “There is no editorializing on our part,” Warden said recently. “We use the reporter’s words, the editorial writer's words." Warden has done something else, too: he has taken the chal lenge out of getting a look at a presidential news summary. All a reporter has to do is ask him to see a copy. Until a couple of months ago, Warden was a reporter himself For 34 years he worked for the Chicago Tribune, many of them as the paper's congressional corres pondent. Now 62, he directs a young staff of three in putting out the news summary in a messy three-room suite in the Executive Office Building. His impartial style incapsulizing the news items, some of them crit ical of the President and his ad ministration, has not drawn any criticism from Ford. But on f first day of his new job, he published a capsulized editorial that dealt harshly with a cabinet member who was a Nixon holdover. “I got a call from his office, com plaining,” Warden said. “I told them I wasn’t hired to run a puff sheet. I've gotten no more criti cisms. I'm just here to report what the newspapers and television commentators are saying.' As it was during the Nixon Ad ministration, the summary usually runs between 35 and 40 pages and emphasizes television news Warden was advised by his boss, Presidential Assistant Paul Mil tich, himself a former newspaper reporter, that whether they liked it or not, most Americans got their news from the TV set. That attitude is reflected in the summary, which includes as a daily feature a single-page chart headed: “Times of TV News Items.” Every evening, members of his staff gather in front of their TV sets, each watching a different network, each with a stopwatch in hand a a pen poised over a blank form. Then they note to the sec ond the time the TV reporter spends on each item and its placement in the broadcast. “It’s a very popular feature,” Warden said with a laugh. “Somebody’s interested in it.” Warden’s news summaries pretty much follow the line of the major newspapers—with one sig nificant exception. "We no longer include Watergate in the major items," he said. “The day-in, day-out routine reporting of the Watergate trial I don * believe is of major interest to President Ford. It’s in the summary but not in cluded as a major story.” The summary comes in two sections and usually contains at least a couple of cartoons—commonly critical of either the President or his ad ministrations. Nothing could be tougher than the unvarnished statement in the news summary for last Sunday, which stated on page 1: “Presi dent Ford's leadership rates as fair to poor with 53 per cent of Americans, according to a Gallup Poll conducted for Newsweek magazine." The sentence was underlined for emphasis. ivick the nine to five routine. Why spend your life sitting behind a desk watching a clock when you can be catapulted from the deck of a ship, soar at supersonic speeds, and operate the world's most advanced elec tronic systems as a Naval Aviator. If you're a college student in good academic standing, and your vision is better than 20/200, you may qualify to join the Navy s flight team as a pilot or a Naval Flight Officer. During your junior sum mer you'll study at Pensacola, Florida, where you'll go thru Aviation Officer Candidate School and pre-flight instruc tion. This means no drills, no ROTC classes, no short haircuts while you are in school. We want you to get a degree and enjoy college while you do it. What's in it for you? A chance to obtain a $12,000 starting salary and a commis sion as a Naval Officer, plus the opportunity to earn your wings and fly with the bold ones. The greatest thing about the Navy's Flight program is that there is no obligation if you change your mind during training. FLY NAVY! See the officer information team on campus January 13-16 Erb Memorial Union Room to be announced ------ Russian public still uninformed about Watergate By PETER OSNOS (C) 1974, The Washington Post MOSCOW—With Vladivostok behind them, the Soviet Com munist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev and his Kremlin colleagues have now made the transition to a new American President, without ever telling the Soviet people what really happened to the last man in the White House. Were an analogous upheaval somehow to take place in the Soviet Leadership, the U.S. press would examine its reason and implications to the last detail. The Kremlin's centrally-directed and tightly-controlled information machinery, however, reports only what suits Soviet purposes. And in the matter of the late events in Washington, the selection has been particularly restricted. As far as the vast majority of Soviet citizens who get their news solely tmn- the official media are concerned, one day last summer Richard Milhaus Nixon stepped down as President of the United States because of something called “Watergate' and because he faced the threat of “impeachment—terms for which no adequate Russian translation was ever supplied. Nothing was specifically said then—or since—about break ins or coverups. Shortly after the changeover, some high-level thought was evidently given to publishing a full-fledged account of the Water gate saga. At least one important, although limited-circulation, Soviet journal had such an article in preparation in September It was never published, and sources at the magazine say it has been permanently shelved. “To tell the whole story," a thoughtful Moscow editor said the other day,“would have required that the seamy side of Nixon be exposed. For us to say that he was bad would put a shadow on all the agreements and achievements of Soviet-U.S. relations in the past few years. We are not prepared to do that.” Officially then, the Soviets passed up the propaganda chance to show the nature of corruption in the world s most powerful democracy to maintain the consistency of detente. Critics of the Soviet establishment offer another reason for the silence. Watergate-style excesses ate routine in the Soviet Union, Roy Medvedev, the dissident histonan wrote recently. The system here, he argued, can hardly advertise the consequences of a “legitimate investigation of real abuses of power." At the outset, Watergate was regarded by the Kremlin as a minor nuisance, an internal political dispute with no bearing on long-term policy. When that belief exploded, the growing con troversy in the United States was portrayed, on the rare occasions that it was mentioned at all, as an effort by the opponents of detente to topple Nixon. Then came the climax and some explanation had to be sup plied. On a television broadcast a few days after the resignation, Leonid Zamatin, the director of Tass, the Government news agency, delivered himself of the view that Nixon was forced out because of U.S economic troubles, inter-party rivalnes in an elec tion year and the yellow journalism of the American Press His thoroughly misleading statement remains the most detailed ever made here on the subject. Everything for the ARTISTS and ARCHITECTS COLE ARTISTS' SUPPLIES STUDENTS & FACULTY _ DISCOUNT Please show card I II off our before purchase I /W reg. prices ON CASH PURCHASE OF ALL SUPPLIES 339 EAST ELEVENTH AVE. AMPLE PARKING - REAROF STORE Just a few blocks from campus German AUTO SERVICE VOLKSWAGEN fe"/ & MERCEDES DATSUN& TOYOTA EXPERT WORKMANSHIP AND SAVINGS Bus. Ph. 342 2912 2045 FRANKLIN BLVD. Eugene, Oregon 97403
