SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

THOUGH James Reston would be a big gun in anyone's army, The Artillery of the Press does not exactly come over as a surprise barrage. Most of what is now being sold for $2.45 in hardback was shot off a year ago in the July issue of Foreign Affairs. The book adds little to Reston's earlier article, in which he presented his views on the state of the Press in succinct and felicitous prose.

Whichever edition you read, Reston's "modest proposal" for equipping the press to deal with a changing society and an increasingly powerful President is a challenge to modern journalism.

Reston's basic criticism of the press is that too much newsprint is being devoted to a mass of seemingly unrelated facts--hard news--and too little to analysis of the cause and development of our foreign policy. Newspapers should no longer concern themselves exclusively with the scoop, Reston argues; radio and television can handle speed reporting and bring the people to the scene of the crime. Instead papers should give reflective and background articles higher priority.

To effectively organize the news for the public, Reston advocates a new format for reflective articles which he calls "case study outlines." Instead of the old style pyramid reporting which gives the most dramatic facts in descending order of sensational value, Reston advocates a new kind of reporting specially designed to pose foreign policy alternatives. First would come an objective statement of the relative facts, then a policy alternative with arguments for and against, followed by description and debate of other possible courses of action.

In this manner, Reston feels that more people would be able to appreciate the narrow range of alternatives the President faces, and would be able to grasp the real options in what presently appears to be a meaningless gush of unrelated facts and personalities.

But who should decide what the real alternatives are? By hand-feeding the public a kind of capsulated, easily digestible solution to foreign affaris problems, Reston runs the risk of allowing hundreds of myopic editors across the nation the opportunity to disguise their bias as the best alternatives. The front pages of today's newspapers may often seem chaotic, but straight reporting is probably less pernicious than an over-simplified account which imposes a particular point of view on the reader.

IF THERE are dangers to the kind of reporting Reston is advocating, he must be credited with having seen that news analysis should not be made to compete with hard news for space. Most newspapers, as Reston points out, devote more space to the comic strip and the fashion page than they do to foreign affairs. If the papers were opened up a little more for long range articles from experts outside the government--the Galbraiths and Schlesingers--it would be an important educational service.

The reason, however, that most papers devote so little space to foreign affairs is that murders, sports, and local scandals sell more papers--and the editors are responsible to their advertisers. Although Reston recognizes this problem, he never really deals with it. The fact is that newspapers, like any other commodity, must cater to the whims of the consumer--and the consumers are more interested in sensational stories than in background material. Reston's only response to this logic, in essence. Is that the papers owe an extensive coverage of foreign affairs to their most intelligent readership.

One of the most interesting questions that the book poses is whether or not the old publish-and-be-damned motto is compatible with modern journalism. Reston aptly describes the plight of a reporter who is faced with the decision of whether or not to print information which might be used as propaganda in the cold war, or which might prove diplomatically embarrassing to our government. The question is best presented through example; first, should reporters have exposed the Bay of Pigs adventure; second should reporters have published Kennedy's plan to intercept Russian ships carrying missiles to Cuba. Presumably in the first instance they might have saved the U.S. from one of its most embarrassing international incidents, while in the second case, they did well to keep silent. But this is all hindsight. We feel that reporters should have exposed the Bay of Pigs because it was a mistake, and that they should have remained silent about the Cuban blockade because it was successful. The point is that there are no clear guidelines which can be laid down, and that reporters must individually decide what the Government can legitimately keep secret.

IN the end, Reston writes hat while reporters can no longer publish whatever they can get their hands on (military secrets and stategic plans), they should not be pushed into publishing just what the government finds convenient.

One of the questions Reston neglects to deal with is the recent growth of radical publications, such as Ramparts, aimed explicitly at exposing issues which will embarrass the government. The reporters Reston constantly refers to are writers a la New York Times) who are basically in agreement with our government's aims and thus feel compelled not to print anything which might thwart our foreign policy. But what about the new writers who feel it is their duty to subvert a foreign policy they are fundamentally opposed to. How do they fit into Reston's patern of journalistic restraints on our government. Apparently they don't, and this makes the book unnecessarily limited.

One of Reston's more feasible suggestions is that much of the "classified information" that floods into Washington every day should be put at the disposal of the press. Most of the material, Reston says, could be published with no harm done the government. The reason it has remained unavailable is that a myth has grown up that anything sent to the government is top secret.

Reston is also concerned with the increasing power of the President, not only to make foreign policy decisions, but also to manipulate the news. In the President's eyes, reporters are either to be used or avoided. And Reston points out that the relationship is an unequal one because the President can decide when he makes an announcement, and whom he gives the scoop to--an advantage which allows him to reward one reporter and punish another. The ideal situation, Reston continues, would be to have the President use the press as an educating arm of the government which explained the problems of the State Department to the people.

For the time being, the old official-reporter competition continues: the reporters trying to get the news fast, and the officials trying to use the press to their best advantage. Often, Reston explains, a reporter will break a story about a speech the President has been planning to make, and the President will change the speech to punish the reporter and retain the element of surprise. The same is true of personnel changes in the government. If it is rumored in the press that an official is to be relieved of his duties, it usually prompts the President to keep him on his staff.

THERE ARE groups in Washington, however, whose interests tend to coincide with those of the press. For instance, most Congressmen feel that a sympathetic press is essential to their reelection, and often court reporters by giving them leads and un attributed statements. The foreign embassies are equally a good source of news, because reporters are able to exchange stories with Ambassadors who want to know what is really being said about DeGaulle in Washington. Reporters are also used to convey warnings to foreign governments which would be difficult to include in a diplomatic dispatch. When, for example, the U.S. wanted to let the French know what would happen if they withdrew from NATO, they gave a reporter a story about the kinds of reactions that might be provoked by a French withdrawal. Nothing so unsubtle could be included in the diplomatic mail.

The point is not that the reporter's lot is an unhappy one. What Reston is trying to convey is that with a new approach to reporting foreign affairs, the American people could be better informed about a subject which is presently being handled almost entirely by the President. In a society which depends on the maxim of "the people knowing best," the press must change to fill an increasingly important educational role