Keeping the Image Intact

Former White House spokesman Larry Speakes dropped a bombshell by proclaiming in his newly published book--written with Robert Pack--that he fabricated some quotes attributed to President Reagan.

Even worse, Reagan claims not to have noticed.

Overlooked in that hubbub, however, is another portion of “Speaking Out” in which Speakes not only reaffirms the importance of TV to White House would-be opinion shapers but also shows exactly how network news programs are vulnerable to manipulation.

“Underlying our whole theory of disseminating information in the White House was our knowledge that the American people get their news and form their judgments based largely on what they see on television,” Speakes says. “We knew that television had to have pictures to present its story. We learned very quickly that when we were presenting a story or trying to get our viewpoint across, we had to think like a television producer.”

That meant, Speakes says, “a minute and 30 seconds of pictures to tell the story, and a good solid sound bite with some news.”

Pictures were critical. When Reagan’s message was about education, Speakes says, Reagan was seated at a school desk and given students to talk to, or a football team or cheerleaders or a science lab--all irresistible visuals for TV.

The White House was always aware, says Speakes, that TV defined news according to the availability of pictures. “No pictures, no television piece,” he says, “no matter how important our news was.”

If there was nothing on the President’s schedule that his staff thought would make the evening news, then media coverage of Reagan was put off limits. “There was no need to have cameras in there and reporters trying to ask questions that would embarrass the President unless we could get our story on TV.”

And what standard was used in deploying White House spokesmen on TV? Only one: audience size. The most popular programs got the biggest White House stars, and so on down the line. That meant that the leading evening news, morning news or Sunday public-affairs program got the Administration’s “No. 1 person on a given subject,” and the others got lesser figures. “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS, for example, would receive only the Administration’s “second-tier” people, Speakes says.

“We played entirely to the ratings,” he says, “and made no bones about it.”

The business about Speakes’ manufactured quotes, meanwhile, is more amusing than shocking, but not so much because of what he did or Reagan’s insistence that he was in the dark about it. Those admissions speak for themselves. What’s amusing are the media cries of outrage that have greeted Speakes’ disclosures. Oh, please.

Speakes says that when he realized that Reagan was losing the public relations battle to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1985 Geneva Summit, he made up a quote and attributed it to the President. “There is much that divides us,” Speakes reported Reagan as telling Gorbachev, “but the world breathes easier because we are talking together.”

Memorable words, just like all the President’s off-the-cuff statements, right? Wrong.

Love Ronald Reagan or not, anyone who has seen him on TV in spontaneous situations, cut off from speech writers and quote writers, knows that he is incapable of a statement as eloquent as the one attributed to him by Speakes.

Thus, the only possible conclusion is that the media knew at the time, or at least suspected, that the quotes were manufactured, but reported them anyway because they made good copy.

If nothing else, this little episode reminds us--as much as those empty photo opportunities in the White House do--how easily some members of the media can be manipulated by the White House.

The phony quotes are even less surprising given the modern trend toward dissembling and ghostwriting in America. Stories persist that Ted Sorensen wrote at least substantial portions of “Profiles in Courage,” for which John F. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize. Uncredited ghostwriters are behind many a celebrity autobiography. The New Republic reports that Dan Rather doesn’t write his own radio commentaries. And it’s still common practice for field producers to do much of the work for which TV reporters get credit.

In a sense, then, Speakes is just another ghostwriter, one who merely went a step too far by apparently not running his phony quotes by the person--Reagan--said to have spoken them.

“There is much that divides us,” Speakes told the media, “but the world breathes easier because I am telling my story.”

(Actually, Speakes didn’t say that. I did. I just thought he needed a dramatic statement in light of the public relations battle that he is now losing).