WSJ Book Review: In the Corridors of Power (Reporting From Washington, by Donald A. Ritchie)

Wall Street Journal ^ | April 12, 2005 | JONATHAN KARL

[OESY]

My favorite nugget in Donald A. Ritchie's history of the Washington press corps concerns... Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent. According to Mr. Ritchie, whenever Duranty was in Washington, he would set up shop at TASS, the official news service of the Soviet Union. Mr. Ritchie writes: "Sympathetic to the Soviet regime, Duranty felt more comfortable writing at the TASS office than at the Times's bureau, under the frosty gaze of bureau chief Arthur Krock."

...Duranty had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a series of articles remarkable for their uncritical praise of Joseph Stalin as the leader who gave "Russia's 150 million peasants and workers what they really want."

Mr. Ritchie, the Senate's official historian, has written a workmanlike history of the Washington press corps from the New Deal to Sept. 11, 2001.... Mr. Ritchie offers a series of character sketches that capture something of the media culture of the past century.

Among the most compelling figures is Krock himself. In one Times column, he quoted Commerce Secretary Harry Hopkins summing up the New Deal this way: "We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect."....

Merriman "Smitty" Smith....

Joseph Alsop....

Years later Sidney Blumenthal .... would use positions at the Washington Post and The New Yorker to boost Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton. Christopher Hitchens marveled at Mr. Blumenthal's "ability to put a radical shine on the most wretched Democratic nominees."....

"Reporting From Washington" makes one thing clear: The glory days of Washington reporting never really existed. There were always journalists who engaged in back-scratching and dubious sourcing. The best of them loomed larger than life, outlasting the presidents they covered. For the most part, though, even they are forgotten today. As the newsroom saying goes: Today's news wraps tomorrow's fish.

[OESY]

Mr. Karl is a reporter for ABC News.

"Reporting From Washington" (Oxford University Press, 390 pages, $30): Propagandists, courtiers, political activists ... and real journalists, too.

[Pharmboy]

This is the quote from the review that struck a nerve in me:

In fact, when Arthur Krock was the New York Times bureau chief, he actually wrote speeches for Joseph Kennedy, even ghostwriting his 1936 campaign book, "I Am With Roosevelt."

Kennedy loved the Nazis during those years. I wonder what Krock thought about them if he was so close to Papa Kennedy.