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PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JUNE 28, 1985
ists for whom publicity is oxygen•••. The press and television
vied for independent access to [ Amal Shiite leader Nabih J Berri.
Those who got it were "used" by the Shiite leader to put addi
tional pressure for concessions on the American government. In
effect, the American media lent themselves to a campaign that
weakened the hand of the U.S. government••••
Finally comes the misrepresentation--not to mention the abuse of
good taste--inescapably bound up with sticking mikes in the faces
of hijack victims and their sisters, brothers, cousins and
aunts•••• Such encounters are the stuff of soap opera•••• They
reduce political acts to tears. They sentimentalize events and
make it that much more difficult for American authorities to deal
with the terrorists, and their intermediaries, on the merits.
Refraining from such actions would, to be sure, restrict the
freedom of news organizations. But•••it is not as though, by
brilliant journalistic enterprise, new and important facts are
disclosed•••• There is an overwhelming case for the exercise of
special journalistic self-discipline.
The terrorists know how to manipulate this "soap opera" to achieve their
ends. (After all, probably quite a few of them have spent time in the U.S.,
observing daytime TV.) The popular press (read more by the middle and lower
classes) generally calls for action, whereas the so-called "elite" press
counsels restraint. A good example of the "call to restraint" was given by
columnist Edwin M. Yoder, writing in the June 21 LOS ANGELES TIMES:
The hijacking of Flight 847, like the Iranian hostage crisis and
the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, brings out the
longing to hit back and hit back hard. Yet the still, small voice
of civilization warns that unfocused reprisal, with no clear con
nection between crime and punishment, may bring only glandular
satisfaction, brief and perhaps even self-defeating. Such action
would gratify the beast in everyone, but visiting violence on a
fuzzy target, for hypothetical and speculative purposes, would
constitute a handsome tribute to terror, levied against civiliza
tion.
Many journalists have been writing lately that there are many "scratches"
in President Reagan's "Teflon coating." But the Bitburg incident proved
not to be a scratch. And the President finally got funding for the Nicara
guan contras from Congress. The TWA hijacking, however, unless quickly and
satisfactorily resolved, could prove to be the first real political blow
Mr. Reagan has suffered. David Broder wrote in his article "It's Not Like
Reagan to Let This Go On" in the June 21 LOS ANGELES TIMES:
Much of Reagan's aura and much of his appeal rest on the convinc
ing picture that· he has conveyed of brimming self-confidence in
himself and this nation•••• No problem, he said repeatedly, no
problem is too big for free Americans to overcome, so long as we
have faith in ourselves. However, that was not the message that
Reagan delivered to a sober and listening nation on Tuesday
night. The news conference answers were studded with references