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LETTERS
MAKING AN ACT WORK
James Aucoin's piece, "An Act that Isn't Working," in the January/February issue, was deeply disturbing, as much for what it said about reporters and editors as for what it said about problems with the Freedom of Information Act.
Aucoin quotes estimates that only about 5 percent of 600,000 annual FOIA requests are from journalists, apparently because we think it's fraught with delays and difficult to use. He even quotes an American Society of Newspaper Editors news release advising us to avoid the FOIA and talk to public affairs officers instead.
If that represents the attitude of most reporters and editors today, God help us all.
The FOIA is of no good to any of us unless we work hard at using it. We must file more requests whether we think the process will work or not. We must call the agency regularly to check on the status of our requests. We must wheedle and appeal and cajole.
We should work harder at planning an FOIA strategy and knowing what to ask for. In some cases, we should file narrow, focused requests; in others we should ask for everything just to get the FOIA bureaucrat's attention and force a dialogue that might help us figure out what's available.
The FOIA can be a wonderful tool. And, whether or not it works just the way we'd like it to, it can force a process within the bureaucracy that can, and often does, give us leverage.
Mike McGraw
|Reporter
The Kansas City Star
Kansas City
JUMPING FROM CBS
In his article "Can CBS News Come Back?" (cjr, January/February), Neil Hickey writes at length about the scaled back news coverage and cutbacks facing CBS Radio, then says " . . . as the dust settled, though, radio station people around the country began seeing big improvements . . . ." Perhaps that dust obscured Hickey's view of the tornado of affiliate defections to ABC.
I certainly understand that lead-time is necessary when reporting for a magazine, yet in the time between Hickey's interviews and publication, ABC welcomed three of the four stations queried about the state of CBS News Radio to our network family (WBAL, Baltimore; WTMJ, Milwaukee; and KARN, Little Rock). If Hickey had placed calls to them prior to publication, he would have learned of the reasons for the switch (along with that of KTRH, Houston). As these stations can attest, ABC News Radio remains the leader in crisis news coverage and customer service. We are committed to providing this to all of our 2,900 radio affiliates Ð including those that have recently joined us from CBS.
Bernard Gershon
Vice president
ABC News Radio
New York
RUMORS, Then and Now
Regarding Jules Witcover's otherwise excellent review of The Dark Side of Camelot, by Seymour Hersh (cjr, January/February), I am puzzled that he and other reporters of the era never heard anything about President Kennedy's sexual proclivities.
When I covered Kennedy in the Wisconsin presidential primary of April 1960 for the Milwaukee Journal, there were rumors that he had been cheating on Jackie and that his health was poor. The ultimate truth was much worse than those rumors but they were circulating, along with a rumor that one reason former President Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt were opposing him was because of his womanizing.
I tried to verify rumors with no success and my efforts were viewed as unfriendly by the Kennedy camp. There had been subtle but intense efforts to enroll me in his claque but I was somewhat appalled by some of the national press who acted more like cheerleaders than reporters. The general expectations was that being "close" to Kennedy would be a means of career advancement, and that was certainly the case for many.
Looking back, it seems as if the press of 1960 gave candidate Kennedy a free ride, which may explain some of the overly zealous coverage politicians get today.
Ken Fry
Lewes, Delaware
DEBATING THE FIRST
Thank you for bringing attention to The Nation's July 21 special issue on free speech (cjr, November/December). In that issue, which I conceived, nine scholars, lawyers, and activists grappled with the following question: Should free-speech supporters rethink First Amendment orthodoxies which have been invoked to prevent reforms such as caps on campaign spending, public access to the airwaves, and regulation of cigarette advertising?
But cjr's readers probably got a different impression. That's because the bold headline of your piece, "Look Who's Trashing the First Amendment," was misleadingly coupled with a large graphic of The Nation's cover, while the author, Floyd Abrams, neglected to mention that we had a balanced mix of traditionalists and revisionists (indeed, only at the end of his five-page piece did he mention that he was one of them.) This made it appear as if The Nation had taken sides in the debate, when all we did was open the pages of the magazine to conflicting views Ð which is what free speech is all about, no?
Andrew Shapiro
Contributing editor
The Nation
New York
GIVING A DAMN
It was remiss of James F. Hoge, Jr. ("Foreign News: Who Gives a Damn?" cjr, November/December) to overlook the coverage of international news offered to American listeners by National Public Radio. In one typical month this year, international news made up nearly 30 percent of the number of items aired on our news magazine shows. This included reports from NPR foreign desk correspondents and interviews by our hosts with policymakers and others. The numbers of listeners reached by NPR news magazines each week is significantly larger than the circulations of any of the newspapers he cites.
Bruce Drake
Managing editor
National Public Radio
Washington, D.C.
BINGHAMS' EMPTY SHOES
The best indicator of the Louisville Courier-Journal's loss of influence ("What Happens When Gannett Takes Over?" cjr, November/December) is the number of offices in Frankfort, the state capitol, in which it is read every morning by state employees like myself. Twelve years ago, before the Gannett purchase, no legislator or bureaucrat would be caught dead reading the Lexington Herald-Leader (except the sports page, for University of Kentucky basketball); the real news was in the Courier. Once, corrupt politicians lived in terror of the Courier-Journal finding them out. Today, the paper's Frankfort correspondent is hardly recognized, much less feared.
Today, the Herald owns this town. Tracking down wild rumors of a "story" in the Courier requires hours on the telephone searching for someone Ð anyone Ð stupid enough to bring one into work. And then it's usually a disappointment.
The Herald has a long way to go to fill the shoes the Binghams left, but it is already light years ahead of the rag Gannett brought to town.
Lisa Aug
Frankfort, Kentucky
BLACK & WHITE & RED ALL OVER
Re: "Why We Love/Hate The New New York Times," cjr, Publisher's Note, January/February: The world is in color, so shouldn't The New York Times also be in color?
Andy Curliss
Staff writer
The News & Observer
Durham, North Carolina
EDITORS' NOTE
The photo of CNN's Eileen O'Connor and ABC's John Bilotta, which appeared on page 3 and page 62 of CJR's January/February issue, was taken by Neal T. Broffman of CNN in Moscow.
