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markably easy. You can do research on the Press lying in bed. You turn on a television and we deliver it to you. You read the newspapers and they’re delivered to the front door. You don’t have to make any effort. It is all brought to you and put in your lap.
If you’re doing research on the Grand Canyon, you have to go there. It’s very easy to produce all sorts of tedious, tiresome critiques of the Press, so everyone does it. It must be the second largest industry in America. Rappahannock News: What is the role of the Press? Brinkley: The role of the Press is to tell people what’s going on, and to tell people what it means if we know. That’s the only role we should have. We don’t have any other role. Rappahannock News: Must its relationship to government be antagonistic?
Brinkley: I wouldn’t say antagonistic. I think its relationship to government should have a degree of skepticism. I don’t think we necessarily should believe everything we’re told without ever inquiring about it, without ever looking into it to see if it really is true.
‘If Qadhafi had a nuclear
weapon and
made any sort of
threat, I would he in
favor of going into
Libya and taking it
away from him.*
Rappahannock News: How serious are claims that the Reagan administration is limiting access to information and controlling the content and flow of news? Brinkley: About as serious now as they were when the same charge was made against George Washington and every president since. I’ve been here since Roosevelt, and I have heard it about every president and I expect to hear it about all others as long as I am here. Rappahannock News: So this administration’s attitude toward the Press is no worse than previous administrations’?
Brinkley: No, it’s better than some. The worst I can recall off hand was Lyndon Johnson.
This is simply a complaint that is always made about every president, and it’s probably always true that they do want to manipulate the news. A president is a president, but anyone else who is in the news also wants to manipulate it; he wants it to be presented his way; he wants it to be reported in such a way that he comes out the hero.
Presidents are the most prominent practitioners, but it is true of lawyers, it’s true of doctors, it’s true of business people, it’s true of everyone I know-they all want to manipulate (the
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