Word: reston
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Consider this selection from a recent column in the New York Times by James Reston, America's most influential reporter, and one of its best. Reston is discussing the controversy between Senator Robert Kennedy '40 and President Johnson over the sincerity of the American approach to negotiation in the war in Vietnam...
...fairly clear that Reston with his usual thoroughness talked to a number of people in the course of his search for the truth of the matter. It certainly looks as if he consulted the British ambassador, and possibly the Canadian and the French (though the phrase "Western embassies" may, like the use of "U.S. officials" for Dean Rusk, represent an attempt to obscure a single source by multiplication.) Reston obviously talked also to high American officials; probably, I think, to the President himself, to judge from Reston's use of the phrase "highest officials here' and the surefooted...
...scene, few correspondents performed more creditably than Timesman James Reston. In Cairo before the war began, he visualized the outcome. "An alarming fatalism seems to be settling on this city," he cabled. "There is very little relationship here between word and action. The government seems to be provoking trouble without preparing for the consequences." The Cairo airport, he noted, was more open to attack than La Guardia airport in New York. The men around Nasser, he reported, were more preoccupied with past humiliations than present dangers...
After talking the matter over with his reporters and New York Times Associate Editor James Reston, Bradlee laid down some guidelines: "First, we encourage every reporter to fight like hell to get it on the record. Second, he should insist that the absolute minimum he'll take is attribution to the Government agency involved. Third, he should say in the story why it is background news. Finally, the reporter is free, at his discretion, to get up and leave a background session...
...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