Backstory: Costliness of the press

By Michael Green

It was a rough week to be a journalist...if you're a journalist:

• Four CBS News executives walked the plank and Dan Rather received criticism for airing a report, based on fake memos, about George W. Bush's National Guard service or lack of it.

• Right-wing "commentator" Armstrong Williams received $240,000 from the Department of Education to promote its programs in print and on the air. He had no plans to return the money because, he said, he earned it and it was paid not to him, but to the company he owns. There's a difference, he said.

It's all sad. CBS News once was a great news-gathering organization, but budget cuts and mismanagement long since gutted it. Williams merely exemplifies the right-wing media's hypocrisy. As for us in Nevada, it's nothing new under the sun--or the R-J or any other paper.

Nevada has a rich journalistic tradition, beginning with Mark Twain and Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise. But two things often are forgotten. One, Dan DeQuille, who helped Samuel Clemens learn how to be Mark Twain, was famed for his brilliant reporting and his ability to make up news when he found nothing newsworthy to publish.

And the Enterprise was political. Editor Joe Goodman sliced and diced opponents like William Sharon, the local robber baron who ran for senator. When Sharon bought the paper, it endorsed him.

In fact, many 19th century newspapers were blatantly partisan. In Nevada--and, to be fairer than most editors then and Fox News now--many other places, this continued well into the 20th century.

Las Vegas and its environs haven't been immune from such problems. Some have been honestly slanted, if that's possible. When the Clark County Review was born in 1909, Editor Charles Corkhill announced it would be Democratic, "providing the Democrats behave themselves and `come across' occasionally."

His competitor, The Age, favored Republicans; owner Pop Squires was active in his party. Later, R-J co-owner Al Cahlan, a Democratic operative, was close to Sen. Pat McCarran. If the senator ever made a mistake, R-J readers were unlikely to hear about it. And Managing Editor John Cahlan bluntly stated his and his brother's goal: to boost Las Vegas. If it made the city look bad, it might not see print.

Hank Greenspun often acted similarly to help Las Vegas, but his Sun butchered the R-J's sacred cows, so Sun readers were unlikely to know if McCarran did something right. Eventually, Greenspun found his own sacred cows. For many years, it would be fair to say, coverage of his friends--most notably Horseshoe owner Benny Binion--verged on the adulatory.

Yet R-J and Sun news columns have been mostly fair, except for the Sun's dear friends and those the R-J views as lefties (as in anyone to the left of Ivan the Terrible). While neither paper would ignore a juicy story, each squeezes out more juice if it's about an object of editorial scorn. That's unfortunate but, until robots edit newspapers instead of humans, inevitable.

Is corruption inevitable? It has been known to infect Las Vegas journalism:

• When Grant Sawyer ran for governor in 1958, a Las Vegas columnist requested $100 a week for favorable publicity. Sawyer was shocked but answered honestly: He couldn't afford the price. Others paid the writer--and he wasn't the only local columnist on the take. Sawyer also was disturbed when John Cahlan reported him as drunk at a dinner when he actually was sick. Cahlan's explanation--"Well, we have to sell papers"--didn't mollify him.

• For years, many entertainment columnists--and other newspaper folk--accepted scads of freebies from casinos. Some were even on retainer and wrote accordingly. A few tried to blackmail casino executives into buying ads.

• Longtime R-J Editor Don Digilio left the paper for a variety of reasons, but what helped trigger it was his investments, which involved people and industries the paper covered.

My old Valley Times boss, Bob Brown, was involved in the Stardust's skimming operation by kicking back advertising money, although his paper took no prisoners in its coverage of Lefty Rosenthal and his pals. But when a friend who regularly advertised in the Times was caught playing fast and loose with public money, Brown helped him address it--in the statement he issued that ran in the story Brown published about the

Joseph Pulitzer, as in the Prize, said newspapers should have no friends, but journalists do help friends and have conflicts. For example, Armstrong Williams called Sen. Harry Reid a racist for saying about Justice Clarence Thomas what everyone knows: that he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Williams used to work for Thomas and feels loyalty to him. Presumably, he would feel that way about Thomas and other Republicans even if he hadn't been paid. I agree with Reid, and the only thing the senator ever paid me was a compliment.

Eric Sevareid, who was with CBS News when it deserved respect, put it best: "The central point about the free press is not that it be accurate, though it must try to be, not that it even be fair, though it must try to be that, but that it be free."

CBS proved the press can't always be accurate. Williams proved the press isn't free; sometimes, you have to pay for it.