THE
evening began as most Friday evenings do at Time magazine:
We were hanging around, waiting for copy to be edited. I had joined
the staff only a month before, but I was already familiar with the end-of-the-week
routine — idle hours spent watching the network newscasts, making
sure nothing important had happened; sipping Scotch with others in the
‘Economy & Business’ section; settling in for another
post-midnight wrap-up. Earlier in the week, I had been assigned a story
on the Congressional defeat of the Consumer Protection Agency and, more
specifically, on what had become of Ralph Nader. The files from the
Washington bureau had been a bit on the derogatory side, but the written
story had turned out to be fair, I thought, considering that Nader’s
personality occasionally gets in his own way. We were awaiting word
from the ‘top’ editors, the final judgment for all Time
articles.
At about nine o’clock, Associate Editor Jim Grant came by my cubicle
to tell me the Nader story was in trouble: The ‘thirty-fourth
floor’ wanted the story changed. Even to a Time neophyte
the message was clear: The company brass presided over Time
Incorporated from the thirty-fourth floor; corporate editor Henry Grunwald
had spoken.
‘What
does Grunwald want?’ I asked Grant
‘A
hatchet job,’ he said.
I hurried to Church’s office. ‘We have to make the Nader
piece tougher,’ he told me. I argued, a little meekly, that I
thought the story was tough, and fair. Church paused, swallowed a mouthful
of Dewar’ s White Label, and sighed. ‘Henry Grunwald,’
he said, ‘just hates Ralph Nader.’ And that was that. Church
went to work on the copy, shifting sentences, honing the ridicule. And
that sharpened axe of Time did fall on Nader (‘imperious,’
‘a driven zealot’) and his ‘consumerism empire.’
The real empire strikes back.
The incident didn’t really surprise me. After all, this was the
magazine of Henry Luce, and the powerful institution he founded in 1923
has never failed to carry his banner: the celebration of big business,
the ethos of mass consumption, and the blossoming of the ‘American
Century.’ Luce and his successors have refined a strategy of managing
the news in the service of corporate America.
The
casual reader of Time is likely to notice its lively prose,
its apparent breadth (if not depth) of knowledge, its amusing anecdotes,
its ponderous political centrism. What is less visible, what is finely
threaded through the magazine, is a rigid dogmatism pervasively integrated
with the ‘news.’ That dogmatism is never acknowledged as
advocacy journalism. Rather, it parades as ‘Americana,’
the sober judgment of experts, the tough choices of a free-enterprise
society. Only when Time targets its enemies does a more obvious
sniping emerge, what literary critic Edmund Wilson once called Time’s
‘jeering rancor.’ Several decades ago, the magazine was
widely recognized as an apologist for tycoons and generals, but as the
American corporation has evolved a more sophisticated image, so too
has Time It has shed it's jingoism and Social Darwinism for
the cool manipulations of Madison Avenue. But the generals and tycoons
are still the heroes.
In foreign policy, for example, Time appeals less to inflated
patriotism and more to a sense of America’s sacred duty as the
world’s greatest superpower. Military glory was particularly dear
to Henry Luce in the halcyon days of 'America First,' but after the
ascent of Luce’s successor, Hedley Donovan, a sense of probity
appeared, hazily reflecting the nation’s outrage over Vietnam,
Cambodia, Chile, and other instances of U.S. bullying. Time
stories began to take a ‘liberal’ view of the complex problems
of the Third World, the need for foreign aid, the wisdom of detente.
In the last two years, however, Time has struck more of the
old Lucean notes — but in the muted corporate style of Henry Kissinger
(Grunwald’ s idol) and the Trilateral Commission. Profiles of
Alexander Haig and General David Jones extol the virtues of ‘resolve’
and brinkmanship. Resolve and duty do avail if we dust off the old-school
shibboleths — increase Pentagon spending, loosen the reins on
the CIA, show the flag in the Persian Gulf, prop up our right-wing friends
‘The challenge,’ diplomatic correspondent Strobe Talbot
tells us, ‘is to distinguish between viable authoritarian regimes
and ones that are doomed’. It’s all so simple.
Even in
its handling of the civil rights conflicts of the last two decades,
for which it won a reputation for liberalism, Time’s
limited approval of equality is best understood not as tearing down
the walls of racism or intolerance, but as opening the doors to the
Time-defined American Dream. Cultural liberty, equality of
opportunity, and lifestyle diversity are ultimately encouraged because
they expand the arena of consumerism: the ‘Me Decade’ was
good for the tycoons. The wretched of the Earth, once they have been
invited into the marketplace, are expected to defend it.
Such attitudes
should come as no surprise. The editors’ prejudices are no more
remarkable than those of their class classmates and neighbours who now
hold similar rank in other enterprises. These corporate executives —
largely white, male, Ivy League, and suburban (from Grunwald down to
the editors and senior writers, twenty-four of twenty-five are men,
and all are white) have a view of the world that is informed by a relatively
simply faith in corporate management, military power, and a fuzzy cultural
pluralism. Time’s peculiar system of group journalism
helps fix and perpetuate those attitudes, for the editors and writers
need never leave the Time & Life Building; they draw their understanding
of the world from Time files, People portraits, and
Fortune commentary.
Time
editors have never been shy about its incestuous relations with the
captains of industry. Time Inc. itself is a giant multinational, with
revenues of $2.5 billion — the largest magazine publishing company
in the world (Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Money, Life, and
Discover). It owns The Washington Star; Time-Life Books;
Little, Brown & Co.; Book-of-the-Month Club; and large interests
in publishing firms in Germany, France, Mexico, and Japan. In 1973,
it enlarged its forestry division by purchasing Temple Industries, making
it one of the largest landowners in the United States, and added the
Inland Container Corporation in 1978.
Not to
be denied its share of the booming video communications market, Time
Inc. bought the American Television and Communications Corporations
in 1978 to complement its own creation, Home Box Office, now the largest
supplier of pay television programs in the country. Both television
operations are expanding rapidly, as are Time-Life Films and the Time-Life
Satellite Network.
At times
the magazine’s pursuit of self-interest is blatant. Early in 1979,
a Time Inc. lawyer confided to me that the Justice Department was ‘looking’
at the company for possible antitrust action. A few months later, the
magazine sponsored an antitrust conference in Washington, DC, with dozens
of business barons in attendance (including executives from Gulf, Bechtel,
Transamerica, Phillips Petroleum, Arco). The resultant Time
story trumpeted the expected:
‘The
purpose of antitrust policy should be to enhance efficiency. Most conference
participants felt that a further tightening of antitrust policy might
promote inefficiency.’ One editor described the conference as
a ‘cynical, pre-emptive strike on the Justice Department. If the
government started an antitrust action, we’d scream about it being
punitive and hide behind the ‘First Amendment’. The antitrust
conference, perhaps cynical, merely maintained the magazine’s
repeated endorsement of corporate giantism. A cover story on ‘The
New American Farmer’ happily cautions: ‘The rule is: Get
big or get out’.
At the
highest levels, Time is serious about managing the news in
Wall Street’s favour. The evolution of the Time system
has supplied it with several potent weapons.
A journalistic
arsenal includes what I call Omission, Misdirection, Derision, the Fact
Fetish, and the Style Machine.
Omission.
Easily the most efficient way to manage the news is to exclude coverage
of those aspects that do not correspond with the corporate view. In
the summer of 1978, I suggested a story on the manifold problems of
the nuclear power industry (new plant orders down, cancellations by
the dozens, costs skyrocketing, protest mounting). The written suggestion
was routinely sent to the New York bureau, through which it would, ordinarily,
circulate to the appropriate editors. But the acting bureau chief, Bob
Parker, came to my office and informed me that he would not send the
suggestion through - a highly unusual block of the flow. 'Nuclear power
wasn't really in trouble', he said, 'and besides, we need nukes'.
I noted that suggestions are simply meant to provoke ideas and that
the reporting would uncover the real story. 'Sorry', Parker replied,
'the suggestion won’t go'. A few weeks later, Peter Stoler’s
rabidly pro-nuclear essay, ‘The Irrational Opposition to Nuclear
Power,’ appeared in the magazine.
Time’s
determination to define political legitimacy requires the exclusion
of critics of big business. For a cover story on leadership in America,
the editors selected 50 young go-getters, including the somewhat puzzling
choices of Frank Shorter, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and museum director Phillippe
de Montebello. One innocent wondered aloud about Jane Fonda and Tom
Hayden, noticeably absent from the list ‘Well,’ replied
Executive Editor Jason McManus, ‘we want to pick people who agree
with us.’
Misdirection.
The editors are quick to frame issues in ways most amenable to their
ideology. An example is the recurrent theme of ‘excessive’
government regulation. In my years at Time, a week hardly went
by without a caustic swipe at the ‘zealous’ regulators who
hamper the free-enterprise system. One ‘news’ story declared:
‘The imperial regulatory juggernaut has clearly gone too far...
The
nation can no longer afford the luxury of costly and inefficient government
control.’ Business editors, in particular, accepted uncritically
the widest estimates of regulatory costs but never reported the many
careful studies showing the broad, if hard to calculate, benefits of
environmental or occupational health standards.
One business
writer, when I pressed him for some fairness in a story about the costs
of clean air, replied that it was futile: The editors wanted the sniping,
and whatever balance he put in would be edited out. Another striking
example concerned inflation; virtually the only remedy endorsed by Time
was cut-backs in government spending for domestic programs. When an
incomes policy was suggested, it was cursorily dismissed, without a
thoughtful assessment, as unworkable’ (even though the 1973 wage
and-price-control inflation rate of 3.2 per cent looks fabulous today).
Derision.
Ad Hominem attacks are familiar to Time readers. Just
as the leaders of business are treated with deference, their adversaries
are frequently treated with contempt. Among national leaders, few have
been targeted for more nastiness than California’s Governor Jerry
Brown. His support of farm workers, ecology, anti-nuclear and pro-solar
politics are not appreciated in Rockefeller Center. Essayist Lance Morrow
writes: ‘Jerry Brown, with his sleek vocabularies of “planetary
realism,” sounds like an item from The Whole Earth Catalog.
Brown possesses a disco Jesuit allure.’ He is, intoned Morrow,
‘a welterweight opportunist’.
At times
the personal attacks are indirect. A recent ‘American Scene’
told of the conversion of a 1960s Seattle peace activist who has forsaken
his Left politics and signed on with a real estate developer (‘Even
profit doesn’t bother me as it did’). The piece not only
sings praises of this model apostate, but vilifies progressives as ‘the
dwindled, sullen ranks of the New Left’ who invoke Bernadette
Dohrn as a ‘cult role model,’ and indulge in the politics
of ’Jane Fonda chic’ or ‘Hanoi hysterics’. The
last line of the parable is the quoted confession: ‘“Maybe
we were completely wrong on Vietnam.”
The
Fact Fetish. A typical Time subscription pitch boldly
proclaims the magazine’s devotion to the truth: 'Time .
. . the most colourful coverage of the week — and the most accurate'.
‘Indeed, the staff is scrupulous about details, with every name
spelled correctly and double-checked, every figure on target, every
quotation carefully confirmed. This attention to minutiae allows the
magazine to claim a kind of accuracy that implies an unwarranted omniscience.
Another ad: ‘Time brings you more than just the news.
Time clarifies the complex and explains the significance of
what is elsewhere merely reported.’ This blend of claims —
that the magazine is both accurate and gives an incisive analysis greater
than mere reporting — has, over the decades, created a spurious
air of insider’s authority buttressed by an endless stream of
insignificant details.
Early
in my tenure, when I was working on a story assessing the issue of nuclear
waste, the first version reflected a certain horror at mismanagement
of disposal sites. Jim Grant was editing that night, and he called in
two of us who were working on the story. The tone of our version was
too anti-nuclear, he said, and he’d have to moderate it. My colleague
was incensed, and a shouting match ensued. ‘Listen,’ Grant
finally said, ‘I don’t care about nukes one way or the other.
I just know this has to be changed.’ His implication was, of course,
that the top editors would not accept such bald skepticism about the
nuclear industry. The story, which was somewhat technical in nature,
was shifted enough to mute the impact, but the ‘facts’ never
changed.
The
Style Machine. The typical Time story springs to life
on a Monday morning in several small gatherings of the staff. The editors
have consulted with their higher-ups, have read story suggestions from
reporters in Time’s 30 bureaus around the world, and
have constructed a ‘story list’. It’s likely that
stories on that Monday list will be changed, or killed, or postponed
by week’ send. But the assignments are made anyway, quickly and
perfunctorily, in the ‘conferences’ that often last no more
than two minutes. The global assembly line is then set in motion. It
is the very essence of ‘group journalism’, the system perfected
60 years ago by Henry Luce.
Reporters
are sent ‘queries’, the sometimes elaborate set of questions
that convey how ‘New York’ wants the story reported. The
routine then rolls forward through the week until the late Friday close:
reporters and researchers gather information and compile ‘files’,
writers read the files and construct highly-stylized prose; senior editors
edit, and frequently rewrite, the writers’ version; ‘top’
editors edit the senior editors’ copy; researchers check the story
for accuracy. Even the corporate brass will get in on the act now and
then. A dozen or more people may work on any given story.
This system
serves several purposes. It can get a story into print quickly, while
preserving Time’s distinctive language. But the machine’s
effect — probably intentional — is far more pervasive. By
fragmenting the functions of journalism, Time fragments responsibility
for content — and vastly enlarges the capacity for editorial control.
‘The
bias in any Time story,’ says one Time writer,
‘begins with the query. From the moment it is sent out, the shape
of the story has been established.’
Moreover,
the assembly-line system keeps most staffers — editors, writers,
researchers — in house, with no connection to the flesh and blood
of the news. The insularity breeds not only a dependence on others’
eyes and ears, but an almost inescapable cynicism. Stuart Schoffman,
who was a Time writer for four years, now describes that role
as one of 'an apparatchik' in the service of the corporation’s
ideas. ‘The institution embodies the very system it extols —
the alienation of the workers from their own work’.
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