The only way that freedom of the press can flourish, they said, is if it has access to power — even if the person who holds the power wasn't endorsed by the newspaper.
In my experience, the politicians and the newspapers have been mutually respectful, even if they didn't always agree on issues.
Of course, there's always been a certain amount of tension between politicians and members of the media. It was best summed up, I think, in something Thomas Mitchell said to James Stewart in the Frank Capra classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
In the film, Stewart plays a naïve political novice, appointed to fill the unexpired term of a recently deceased senator. He feels his arrival in Washington was misrepresented by the newspapers, and he goes on a mission to hunt down the reporters and punch each one in the nose.
When he discovers a group of reporters assembled in a local watering hole, he quickly finds himself cornered by them and confronted with their cynical views of government. Mitchell tells him that reporters are the only ones who can afford to tell the truth. "We don't have to be re-elected!"
Relationships between the media and the politicians aren't always ideal. Richard Nixon, for example, used his position to compile a list of his political opponents, mostly members of the press. Legal counsel John Dean left little doubt what the purpose of the list was.
"This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."
John Dean
I have no evidence that either Nixon or any of his associates began compiling the enemies list before Nixon became president. (The original list included the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Daniel Schorr of CBS and columnist Mary McGrory. The list was constantly revised, but it later included journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post.)
Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, made an apt observation when the existence of the enemies list was made public. (I don't know the statement word for word, so I'm probably paraphrasing here.) Ford said that any man who has to keep a list of his enemies has too many enemies.
I hope we're not getting indications that such a list is being compiled by the Obama campaign.
Earlier this week, reporters from the New York Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News were ejected from the Obama campaign bus.
The Washington Times reports today that Obama's campaign insists it ran out of space, for various reasons — and that it wasn't punishing the three newspapers for endorsing John McCain.
You can read what each newspaper said in its endorsement of McCain here:Kirsten Powers, a columnist for the New York Post, calls the action by the Obama camp a "Nixonesque" move.
"This is bipartisanship?" she asks.
I hope that what the Obama campaign says is the truth.
Banning any member of the media from having access to power will bring change, all right.
But if the goal is to punish those who support someone else, it won't be the kind of positive change Obama and his acolytes have been preaching about.
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