THE VIEWER AS GREAT COMMUNICATOR

We get letters . . .

When is your vendetta against President Reagan going to end? You say he is not as articulate as some past Presidents, including Johnson and Carter. You’re either deaf or daft. Unfortunately, newspaper critics are not elected. We’re stuck with them.

MR. and MRS. F.V. BROWN

Simi Valley

When you stated that “Reagan is our most imprecise and inarticulate President in the TV era, no match for Eisenhower . . . “ etc., your memory fails you. Since, as a volunteer for Stevenson, I wrote radio and TV spots for Adlai during his 1952 campaign against Ike, I was well aware of the general’s verbal inadequacies. His ad-lib sentences frequently presented the spectacle of a regiment of subjects stumbling through a rhetorical wilderness in search of suitable predicates!

MORT R. LEWIS

Marina del Rey

Ronald Reagan handled himself well at his press conference, just as he did in the State of the Union address and his recent television talk to the nation. But neither you nor any of your colleagues in the media seem to want to let it go at that. You seem, and I truly hope I am wrong, offended by the man’s popularity and success.

TONY THOMAS

Burbank

Why would any President, regardless of party affiliation, expose himself to the liberal, obnoxious, discourteous, ill-bred press members, who behave like animals? Since they’re so poorly educated and lack class, they have never been trained to show any respect for the office of the presidency.

JANE NIEMAN

Los Angeles

If modern American Presidents were limited to radio as their means of communicating with the American people, Ronald Reagan would never have become known as the “Great Communicator.” I listened to his recent press conference on the radio, and I can assure you that he came across glaringly as a “babbling fool.”

MARCIA SIMONSON

Los Angeles

Reagan’s press conference was a most shameful bit of show biz. Although I am a fourth-generation Republican, I am very disappointed to see so little commentary critical of the President and his staff. Almost all commentators of every political orientation have behaved as if they were afraid to speak out for fear they would destroy the illusion of a real President and show a hopelessly bumbling world leader.

TOM BARNARD

San Clemente

We would like to see the President’s press conferences eliminated completely. We would like to recommend news people be refused access to the President. Media persons say, “We ask questions U.S. citizens want answered.” Not so! We do not need nor want answers to the unfair questions the media ask.

CLARENCE E. HALL

Hacienda Heights

The problem with Sam Donaldson is not the blurring of the line between reporting and analysis. It is a problem of style. He and his admirers have confused tenacious investigative reporting with being belligerent and obnoxious. No other TV newsman can touch him in being arrogant, opinionated and humorless.

N.B. MARTIN

Visalia

Sam Donaldson is one of the few reporters covering the White House for whom I have any respect whatsoever. Most of them are so wimpy they don’t even try to follow up on the non-answers to questions they ask. At least Donaldson tries.

JOSEPHINE SHEPHERD

Riverside

I agree with your comments on “I’ll Take Manhattan” on CBS. After viewing two episodes of the worst sexual display I’ve ever seen on regular TV, I decided to turn it off. Without the sex, there really wasn’t much of a plot.

I did not really go along with the condom ads on TV, but must admit that those would be no more offensive than the torrid scenes I witnessed in this presentation. It seems a little ironic that the three major networks censor ads which might help stop the spread of AIDS, but do nothing to stop the daily and nightly trash that helps spread the idea that sex with multiple partners is very attractive.

J.E. COUTURE

Southampton, Mass.

Concerning “Silas Marner,” I can’t believe my eyes sometimes when I read your reviews. A “better watch than read”? Have you no imagination? Have you ever read “Silas Marner”? Any Victorian novel? Any novel? Or have you been so bombarded by couch-potato ideology that you have become one?

MRS. G.G. SAMUELIAN

Cerritos