policy - The Black Vault

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1972 election victory, the attack was renewed. The purpose of these
attacks was to neutralize the media elements that were perceived as supporting
the Democratic Party and which blocked the President's appeals to
what Nixon and Agnew identified as the "silent majority." 54/
The impact of the Nixon-Agnew attack on the media was heightened
by self-examination within the news establishment that had begun after the
1968 Democratic convention. In part, this introspection stemmed from the
difference of political philosophies between the publishers and the
reporters. As noted above in the discussion of the media relations during
the Kennedy administration, while Kennedy did not have wide support among
the publishers, he was close to many of the Washington reporters in both
political philosophy and in cultural outlook. By 1968, the reporters of
the large metr3politan dailies considered themselves doves regarding the
Vietnam War, and many of them sympathized with black leaders. At the time
of the 1968 convention, news media analysts began to question whether the
press was in step with the rest of the nation or whether it was espousing
views to the left of the majority and turning away from objective reporting
toward advocacy. 55/ This kind of introspection, and fears among publishers
that reporters had overs'.epped their bounds in advocating positions
on the American left, led to a dramatic turnabout in 1968-1969 in the
approach the media took toward reporting the Vietnam War and the antiwar
movement. 56/
Unquestionably, the Nixon-Agnew assaults on the media strengthened
this trend. The difference in television presentation of the antiwar
movement was shown dramatically in the coverage given Agnew's second attack
on the media for being unfair to Nixon. All three national television
networks broadcast live this second Agnew assault on the media, but a day
and a half later when between three to five-hundred-thousand American
citizens gathered in Washington, D. C. to demonstrate against the war, CBS
and NBC did not have cameras on hand to record the event. NBC presented
only five minutes of live coverage. 57/ Perceptibly, the coverage of the
antiwar movement and the war began to change.
Though the war would continue
for another five years, the US
news media seemed to agree that the
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