How the news shaped America, and was shaped by it: Powers That Be by David Halberstam

David Halberstam’s THE POWERS THAT BE is a doorstop of a book but it’s a fascinating doorstop. Published in 1979, it looks at four players in the news media: Time magazine, CBS news, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times (Halberstam touches on the New York Times but in less depth, reportedly because he used to work for them), chronicles their growth and change over the 20th century (sometimes going back further) and the ways in which their tremendous influence has become a tremendous trap.

(This was the most convenient newspaper-related photo I have in my images library)

The book starts in the 1930s when William Paley moved into CBS, a tiny fringe company (NBC was far stronger) in the dubious new business of radio. He saw potential and radio coverage of WW II confirmed radio was going to be a big deal. Time and its sibling publication Life were the product of visionary Henry Luce and reflected his anti-communist politics (I remember flipping through old 1960s issues of Time and marveling that we were always, constantly on the brink of defeating North Vietnam); the Washington Post was for years just the local paper covering small-town Washington DC; and the Los Angeles Times existed to give its owners, the Chandlers a voice for Republican politics and their personal economic interests (which they assumed coincided with Republicans winning elections).

Politics changed. Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London in the early days of WW II made millions of Americans more sympathetic to the Allies. Halberstam credits Luce as a major influence on America’s insistence Taiwan was the rightful government of all China (we didn’t recognize “Red” China as a legit government until the Nixon administration). When Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson for president, Eisenhower, while disliking TV appearances, learned to make them; Stevenson never did. The Chandlers helped Republicans by covering them and simply not covering Democrats.

As James Fallows notes in the post that got me to read this, none of these companies are the forces they once were, but this book is still more relevant than, say, Season Finale (chronicling the battles between the UPN and WB networks). It shows that in many ways, the weaknesses we’re seeing now from the media in the face of the Felon Administration are nothing new. Yes, CBS took on Joe McCarthy but they were so nervous about it Murrow had to pay to advertise the special out of their own pocket. The Chandlers show biased coverage to suit a publisher’s personal agenda is nothing new. Many editors trusted White House assurances we were winning in Vietnam more than accounts from reporters who were over there.

The bigger and more profitable they got the worse it got. In the 1960s, one CBS executive apologized to a stockholders meeting for how occasionally pre-empting nightly TV shows for news had lowered their revenue, otherwise stockholders would have seen an extra 6 cents dividend per share. Kowtowing to Wall Street became essential — don’t do anything that would lower the stock price! The need for access led news organizations to mute their criticism of the government, otherwise they’d offend their sources. By the time of Halberstam’s books, the vulnerabilities are apparent.

That’s not to say we should just shrug and assume this is just the way things are. As the book shows, all these newspapers (and TV) changed a lot over the decades — they can change again and be better. We should hold them responsible when they’re not.