Feeding Problems

WHILE the big guns of Senator McCarthy's Wisconsin campaign were firing away at Administration policies, a smaller, but at times almost as nasty skirmish flourished between the Senator's staff and national reporters covering the campaign.

Newsmen griped--constantly in private, sometimes in print--about the ineptness of McCarthy's organization. McCarthy staffers retorted in private that the reporters didn't understand that McCarthy was trying to create "a new 1968 politics" by building much of his organization from political amateurs. And, one day, McCarthy himself said that some of the press were "frustrated campaign managers."

It was more than the usual crossfire between politicians and press. In this case, the newsmen were concerned not with the ultimate aims or tactics of the McCarthy machine, but rather with its efficiency. One newsman, who admitted that he didn't care for Nixon's personality or his policies, nevertheless said that the former Vice-President's well-oiled campaign "almost makes a man prefer Nixon."

From their point of view, the reporters had reason to complain. The McCarthy organization could muster thousands of volunteers from throughout the nation to canvass Wisconsin voters for the Senator, but it often broke down when confronted with the more sophisticated parts of running a campaign, particularly the delicate job of managing the media.

McCarthy himself often irritated the newsmen by junking speeches prepared by Richard Goodwin in favor of his own at the last minute. Reporters who had early deadlines and thus field their stories from the advance text boiled at this habit.

CONSTANT confusion--most due to simple staff errors--in the scheduling of the campaign was another sore spot. "Somebody thought it took two hours (instead of half an hour) to drive to Fond du Lac," was the explanation for one such mistake. "Must be the same person who thought it took two hours to fly there," a reporter commented.

A Los Angeles Times reporter waiting through another delay took a light view of the matter and produced a "revised schedule":

1:10 p.m. Leave for Ripon

1:15 Wrong turn at Woodhill

2:40 Error discovered at Ladoga

4:00 Directions asked at Pickett

6:00 Arrive at Ripon

Pick up rest of schedule advancing times by four hours.

Thirty-year-old Seymour Hersh, McCarthy's press secretary at the time, picked up a copy of the fake schedule. Though described by Time Magazine as "an unexcelled master of profanity," he just laughed a little nervously. But, a few hours later, Hersh justified Time's description when he found that someone in McCarthy's headquarters had handed out an important news release in Milwaukee while most of the newmsen were jogging along Wisconsin back roads in the press bus.

Hersh, of course, was caught in the middle of the crossfire between press and McCarthy staff. A former Associated Press reporter, he often reddened at the errors of local McCarthy workers. "NTTL"--Never Trust The Locals--Hersh sometimes muttered during the campaign. Such organizational problems may have eased Hersh's decision to resign a week before the primary, when he felt that McCarthy was not campaigning hard enough in the Milwaukee ghetto.

After Hersh's resignation a high McCarthy spokesman promised assembled reporters that "one of the top public relations outfits" would join the campaign to improve the press facilities. But, newsmen grmubled again on the night of President Johnson's withdrawal, when the Senator kept TV crews waiting for over an hour before he appeared for a scheduled press conference.

AFTER a particularly hard dav with the press, one McCarthy aide said that he liked some of the reporters covering the campaign, but then went on to generalize about the breed--"A bunch of cry-babies."

He was half right. The press undoubtedly magnified the problems of the McCarthy campaign by emphasizing those closest to them--the errors of the press staff--while ignoring the sometimes inefficient, but extensive student canvassing which brought the Senator's campaign to most Wisconsin voters.

Yet, if the reporters were "crybabies" it was principally because the McCarthy organization did a poor job of feeding them the Pablum which is the constant diet of most newsmen covering campaigns. Most reporters--particularly those from the wire services and the second-rate dailies--remain encased in the womb of the press bus or plane and file a stream of speech stories, color stories, and isolated voter reaction stories fed to them in press releases or by word of mouth by the candidate's press staff. In between deadlines, they gossip about politician, view the scenery, or ask around for the name of a good restaurant at the night's stop.

And this is what the candidate's press staff wants. The press is surrounded by the people who have nice things to say about the campaign. Those with complaints -- black leaders in the Milwaukee ghetto, in the case of Wisconsin--have a harder time reaching the reporters. When a crisis such as the Hersh resignation breaks, the campaign staff can fall back on the time-honored tradition of the "backgrounder"--a session in which a campaign aide gives newsmen a story which cannot be attributed except to "a high spokesman" or "sources close to..." "I don't want to make a public defense of the campaign," one such speaker began. "No, vou want to make an anonvmous public defense," one reporter familiar with the technique interjected.

Despite their talk about "something, new in American politics," the McCarthy organization did nothing to change this aspect of American politics. They just didn't use the old methods with the efficiency to which reporters had become accustomed. And so the occupants of the press bus sometimes bit the hand that usually feeds is so smoothly.