76-02-A4
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About the Press
TranscriptI'd like to talk about what happened to a planeload, sometimes busload, of press people, campaign staff and a candidate between January and August of this election year. I'll be right back. I've always believed that a lot of problems could be solved by people talking to each other instead of about each other. Now I realize that in a way the job of those who report the news is to talk about the rest of us. And a lot of us who are or have been in public life do a lot of talking about the press. Usually we're complaining, sometimes with good reason but maybe we need to have a little more understanding of the other fellow's job. Last January I climbed on one of two chartered buses and began campaigning in New Hampshire. For the next few weeks I alternated between the two buses, riding part of the day in each bus. This I was told was necessary to the happiness and contentment of the traveling press. Most of the passengers on the buses were just that-the traveling press. The rest of the passenger list was made up of campaign staff, volunteers and one candidate plus wife. Later as the campaign swung out into other states the buses became a chartered 727. There were network news commentators with names and faces as familiar as those of your next of kin. Stars of the print media, both magazine and daily papers, whose faces weren't familiar but whose names were, and TV camera crews and photographers. Most of them were representing Eastern-based news media. I'll confess to me they were the hostile press. But we were even because for most of them I was that Neanderthal reactionary from out west. I knew many of them had written pre-campaign commentaries about me, questioning my stomach for the battle, my staying power and whether I was for real. Now we were on tour together through the snow-covered hills of New Hampshire doing as many as 12 towns a day. In each town the procedure was the same, press off the bus first so they could cover everything from stepping off the bus to greeting the local committees and so forth. then the town meeting, sometimes in an auditorium, sometimes in a fire station. Once out in the snow where I stood and spoke from atop a stack of feed bags and took questions from the audience. Every so often there would follow a press availability where they could have at me with reference to my remarks or my reaction to something the opposition had said in campaigning. In bus and plane between stops we met in one-on-one interviews. Over the long months and the thousands of miles you get pretty well acquainted. I saw the rough side of their work the long hours when the day was done for me, but they were still filing stories. In some instances with a special feature their producers or editors had called for their work went on through the night, yet there they were on the bus or plane the next morning ready for the day's work ahead. I have to say their treatment of me was fair. They were objective, they did their job and their pain was real when a shot or a paragraph was cut in the home office which lessened the objectivity of what they'd done. More important, we parted friends and I'm richer for their friendship. I even think they found the end of the trail not an easy story to write. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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