Sleight of Hand

In his 1988 On Bended Knee: The Press and The Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard reports this event, as described to him by an anonymous witness:

In the very first weeks of his presidency... an ABC News camera crew visited Reagan in the Oval Office for a routine interview. Three-by-five index cards in hand, the President eloquently delivered the statements his staff had prepared, and in short order the interview was over. But no sooner had Reagan finished speaking than he strode over to his desk, reached into a drawer and happily pulled on a small green finger monster. Grinning and providing his own sound effects, he waggled his fierce little friend at the camera crew three times, winked broadly and left the room, chuckling. The ABC producer in charge of the event remembered that a White House "elbow grabber" approached him and nervously asked, "You weren't rolling on that, were you?" ... the producer assured the aide, falsely, that no, they had not been. Later... the videotape in question was buried in the ABC archives, never to be broadcast.

This is on pages 108-9, part of a chapter ("'Jelly Bean Journalism'") on the relationship the White House established with the media as soon as Reagan came to power.

Hertsgaard outlines what was to become the pattern for media treatment of Republicans in the Oval Office. A few key factors in the 1980s cheerleading:

A post-Watergate press corps was eager to prove its "loyalty."

Establishment journalists jumped on the patriotic bandwagon when Iran released U.S. hostages at the moment of Reagan's inauguration.

Media outlets were happy to run whatever pretty pictures a slick Hollywood operation staged for them.

This chapter's title comes from one of Hertsgaard's interviewees: a CBS Evening News associated producer during Reagan's first term, Richard Cohen. [A different guy than the WaPo hack of that name.]

During Reagan's time in office, TV coverage in particular was what Cohen dubbed "jelly bean journalism"—

In Cohen's view, when Reagan came to power, network news operations were so tickled by the ability of the new White House media apparatus to provide visually appealing images of the President that they seemed to lose their journalistic bearings. Either not seeing or not minding the manipulation inherent in the process, they eagerly broadcast pictures carefully staged by Michael Deaver to project an endearingly positive image of Reagan as a man who wished no harm to anyone... control over television's portrayal... was so pervasive early in the administration, Cohen felt, that "Deaver should have been listed as the executive producer on all the political stories we broadcast.

"Much more than newspapers, it was the institution of the evening news that would make it or break it for Reagan, Cohen added. "I think it was obvious to the Reagan people that if they gave us pictures of Ron kissing Nancy or giving a wink to the camera, it would get on the air. We were slow to realize we were being suckered, and when we did we just didn't care much about it. It may just be too much to ask an executive producer to pass up a great picture."

As Cohen also told Hertsgaard, he later came to realize that the first year's coverage set the tone for Reagan's two terms.

From the start, as that unidentified ABC interviewee's revelation suggests, the media were happy to pretend they hadn't seen White House Finger Monster Theater, and more.

The stage is set.

For his next trick: the budget will be announced February 18, 1981 (PBS timeline).

Without a watchdog media during the early months, the administration had free rein, in Hertsgaard's words, for "skillful manipulation of the public dialog" that "elevated Reagan to near god-like status in official Washington and nurtured the already gathering climate of timidity and reactionary conformity."

In interviews David Gergen and Michael Deaver called the media's coverage of Reagan's first six months "fair and balanced" [Hertsgaard's 1988 phrase]. The former White House staffers noted there was more criticism by August of 1981.

And by that point, the successful media campaign and political maneuvers ("with lots of Democratic help") had already achieved passage of what Hertsgaard calls the White House's "astonishing economic package," which "set in motion one of the greatest government-engineered transfers of wealth in modern U.S. history."