January/February 2001

January/February 2001 | Contents

Covering Icons, Iconoclastically

BY STEVE WEINBERG

Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom
by Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster, 270 pages, $25

Maestro is as positive about its subject as DiMaggio is negative. And Woodward is more positive about journalists' performances as well. Still, Woodward's book about thirteen years of economic policymaking led by Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan contains some telling examples of the coverage during that period:

* After a precipitous stock market drop on October 13, 1989, Federal Reserve Board vice chairman Manuel Johnson Jr. wanted Greenspan to make public that the Fed would supply additional liquidity to head off a crash. Greenspan wanted to wait. So, Woodward reveals, Johnson leaked the liquidity possibility to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Both newspapers bought the leak, and granted anonymity to a high-level public official who ought never to receive such a pass. (That's my take, not Woodward's; he grants anonymity promiscuously in this book, as he has in the past.)

* Mortimer B. Zuckerman, in his role as owner of U.S. News & World Report, used the magazine to oppose Greenspan-inspired interest-rate increases despite a talk with Greenspan during which the professional economist explained some of his decisionmaking processes. According to Woodward, "Zuckerman invited Greenspan to come speak to the U.S. News editorial board. He found Greenspan's talk there the single most brilliant exposition of the economy that he had ever heard -- but continued to pound on him nevertheless."

* On June 7, 1995, Greenspan answered reporters' questions during a banking conference in Seattle. The New York Times headline that resulted: GREENSPAN SEES CHANCE OF RECESSION. The Washington Post headline:RECESSION IS UNLIKELY, GREENSPAN CONCLUDES. According to Woodward, Greenspan laughed at the discrepancy. He called his answers at the press conference "constructive ambiguity."

* The New York Times published an article on the front of its business section August 29, 1994, under the headline A SPLIT OVER FED'S ROLE; CLASHES SEEN AFTER VICE CHAIRMAN SAYS JOB CREATION SHOULD ALSO BE A POLICY GOAL. Woodward says the Times reporter on that piece was new to the Fed beat, and as a result failed to place the vice chairman's speech in the correct context. The vice chairman's comments were not a significant departure from Fed policy, Woodward believes.

* The Wall Street Journal published an article on June 3, 1987, in which two reporters wrote that Paul Volcker, Greenspan's predecessor, had declined renomination during a meeting with Howard Baker, who was representing President Ronald Reagan. According to the Journal, Baker asked Volcker to reconsider. But when Woodward interviewed Baker for Maestro on May 15, 2000, Baker said that during that meeting he never tried to convince Volcker to stay on.

Woodward might have misinterpreted sources in this book, but it will be difficult for any reader to tell. Yes, the book contains twenty pages of endnotes -- the only previous Woodward book with endnotes was his investigation of the actor John Belushi's life and death. The endnotes in Maestro are way better than nothing.

Yet Woodward granted anonymity to almost every important source. He sort of explains his usual policy in the Acknowledgments section:

"The core of this book comes from more than 100 sources who agreed to provide information as long as their identities would not be revealed. Some were official and some unofficial; some might not mind having their names mentioned, others would. Exercising maximum care, I will thank none by name."

Why oh why do Woodward and Cramer continue to operate like this? Why won't they at least explain what their unnamed sources have to fear from talking on the record? Richard, you've backslid from your previous book. Bob, you've made a step in the right direction with Maestro. Next time, how about going all the way, setting an example for all the reporters and editors -- including my twenty-year-old daughter in journalism school and your daughter, Bob, writing for the San Francisco Bay Guardian -- who want to be the next Cramer or the next Woodward.

Steve Weinberg lives in Columbia, Missouri. He is currently writing a life of the journalist Ida M. Tarbell.