Changing Channels

C-SPAN's Brian Lamb on how unfiltered reporting and media competition are transforming American politics.

Thomas W. Hazlett from the March 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 9)

Reason: So three days of law school put you in the Navy?

Lamb: Absolutely. And I loved it. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Reason: This was what year?

Lamb: This was 1964 that I went in the Navy. I graduated from Purdue in '63.

Reason: Was Vietnam on the radar screen then?

Lamb: It was. There was a lot of tension in the air. In those days there was a draft. If you got married and had children, you didn't have to worry about it. But I wasn't married, haven't married, and didn't have children, and therefore it was something hanging over my head.

I could have avoided the draft by staying in law school, but the Navy looked attractive to me, looked like the right thing to do, so that's why I did it. By the time I got into the Navy in '64, we were very concerned that we were going to get shipped to Vietnam in '64 and '65. But we didn't.

I went to Norfolk, Virginia, was on a ship down there that traveled to the Mediterranean most of the time. After a couple of years I came to the Pentagon in the public affairs office in the Defense Department. I worked under the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, Arthur Sylvester, who you might remember was quoted early in the Kennedy administration as saying the government had a right to lie. That was one of my introductions to government and public affairs. Robert McNamara was the secretary of defense. I spent two years there in the audio-visual news department answering questions for the networks and the television medium and setting up news conferences. It wasn't an important job but for me it was a great window on the world and how the media interacted with the government.

I was increasingly dismayed by what I saw happening. And it was my first education into how news was made, and what motivated correspondents and what motivated the government, how government attempted to shade and cover up and lie, and how the media in some cases would be a willing accomplice.

Reason: What was your clearest recollection of this relationship between the government and the press?

Lamb: I always remember one particular facet of the weekly dissemination of news. Robert McNamara used to have a weekly meeting with the press on Thursday afternoons. It was held in his dining room. The media sat around his dining room table and asked him questions. Whenever they used the material they could only quote "U.S. officials."

The public never knew who those U.S. officials were, but it allowed the government to get its message out and it allowed the media to have a story. Every Friday morning in TheNew York Times a lead story said, "U.S. officials predict the bombing of the North will end in two months." And those 25 reporters sitting around the table all knew who said it, but the public never did, and at that time no one helped them understand it.

It seemed to me to be a fraud. I know the people involved in it then thought they were doing honorable work, and no one was per se lying at a particular meeting, although the secretary of defense didn't tell the truth all the time--we've learned that since then.

Reason: By his own admission.

Lamb: By his own admission. And I kept saying to myself, There's something wrong there. This ought to be an open situation, and the more closed it is and the more insular it is, the more both sides can fool the public for their own reasons. And we found ourselves in a major war, 500,000 troops deployed and 58,000 people killed.