18 June 2008
Exhibit Showcases Love-Hate Relationship Between FBI and Press
Government agencies have both “cooperation and conflict” with news media
Washington -- Using an arsenal of tactics such as selective leaks and reprisals against negative press coverage, the FBI cultivated a relationship of “cooperation and conflict” with the news media as it rose from a fledgling crime-fighting organization to the primary investigative branch of the U.S. government.
The Washington Newseum’s new “G-Men and Journalists” exhibit examines the complex relationship between government agencies and the press. A mutual dependence is driven by government’s need to promote its activities with the public and journalism’s need to give its audience interesting, objective information. But the mutual distrust engendered by conflicting goals makes for an uneasy partnership.
“There’s been an evolution in the relationship between the media and the FBI. Sometimes it has been very cooperative. Other times it has been extraordinarily combative,” Newseum Deputy Director Susan Bennett told America.gov.
The FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, ran the bureau for a crucial 48 years as its duties expanded from a 1930s fight against organized crime into counterespionage during World War II and the Cold War, and controversial surveillance activities on U.S. civil rights and anti-war leaders in the 1960s and 1970s.
“J. Edgar Hoover was a master at maneuvering and manipulating the press,” Bennett said. “He loved to leak stories that were favorable to the FBI and that certainly helped burnish the FBI’s image as crime fighters in the early days. He also punished people in the media” who wrote stories he did not like.
The FBI’s famous 10 Most Wanted list began as a 1949 media query when International News Service reporter James F. Donovan asked a bureau spokesman, “Who are the 10 toughest guys you are looking for?” The ensuing front page article in the Washington Daily News proved such a hit that the bureau even now regularly publicizes the list as a tool to help capture fugitives.
However, reporters critical of Hoover and his bureau earned the nickname “jackals” from the director. Being a jackal, Bennett said, “could mean that you weren’t granted access to interviews or it could be in some cases, reporters were actually investigated … their mail was intercepted, wiretaps were put on their phones.”
The exhibit highlights the case of William Beecher, a New York Times reporter who wrote about then-secret U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia during the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. Beecher gave the Newseum the memo signed by Attorney General John Mitchell in 1970 authorizing a telephone wiretapping operation.
Patty Rhule, a project editor for the exhibit, showed America.gov an e-mail from Beecher.
“[I]n order to tap my home and office phones, the FBI had -- for the first time -- to tap the entire switchboard of the New York Times Washington bureau. That was the only way they could tap my office calls. And that was a bold step, requested by Hoover and OKd by Mitchell,” he wrote.
Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and anti-war activists like John Lennon were also the targets of the FBI’s domestic surveillance activities. But Hoover’s tactics “mellowed” after journalists publicized these investigations, according to Bennett.
ETHICAL DILEMMAS OF A RESPONSIBLE FREE PRESS
Along with the circulation of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, the news media and the FBI found other ways to cooperate against crime. The Newseum exhibit highlights the 1932 kidnapping and murder of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s child and how classified ads in the press were used to pass messages between the kidnappers and law enforcement.
In the United States, news outlets continue to struggle with the ethical dilemma of circulating messages from criminals and killers, even if such publicity could help lead to their capture.
In 1995, Ted Kaczynski, who was known as the “Unabomber” for his 20-year campaign of bombings against universities, airlines and other targets, sent a letter to the New York Times promising to “desist from terrorism” if his manifesto against modern technology was published.
The FBI asked major American newspapers to accede to the request in hopes the manifesto would help identify the killer.
“That [caused] a great debate among the newspapers about whether this was the right thing to do -- to give in to the demands of a mad bomber, literally,” Bennett said. “And in the end, they did that. And in the end, that led to his capture because his brother recognized some of the phrases in there and he called the authorities and that led to his arrest.”
However, at the same time, many news outlets are reluctant to air statements by terrorism figures such as Osama bin Laden or videos such as the beheading of kidnapping victims.
“It’s a real ethical dilemma for the media, both in this country and internationally. Because at what point do you stop informing the public of things that you have in your posession because it’s inappropriate or because it’s beyond anything, the usual guidelines of sensitivity?” Bennett asked. “Judgment has to be used by the media as well as by law enforcement officials in cases such as this.”
For more information, see “Washington’s ‘Newseum’ Promotes Free Flow of Information.”
