Sunday, February 8, 2015

Where Eagles Dared


Sandy Socolow (CBS News)


You may never have heard of Sandy Socolow, especially if you weren't around during the 60s and 70s and beyond, when watching Walter Cronkite deliver the nightly news on CBS was a ritual in millions of American homes.
I confess that he wasn't exactly a household name to me, either, until I got to know his former wife, Nan, through New York Times commenting. (Nan has contributed several poems to Sardonicky, and a Watergate-era poem she wrote to him is reprinted with her permission at the end of this post.)

Sandy Socolow, longtime producer of Walter Cronkite's newscasts, died on January 31 at the age of 86. He was among the last of the so-called "Murrow Boys," former newspapermen who turned the new medium of television into a unique and popular information-delivery vehicle. This was before news, and entertainment and corporate sponsor interests merged, and TV news -- as evidenced most recently by the Brian Williams scandal -- has been exposed as something of a personality, money- and ratings-driven fraud.

Journalists, many of them with perfect hair and pretty faces, were both physically and psychologically embedded deep within George W. Bush's misbegotten adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping to glorify the war effort and probably helping to prolong it as well, through their largely non-critical coverage. (Remember the phony "Saving Private Jessica" story, and the staged toppling of Saddam's statue as preludes to the selling of war as a soap opera of infotainment?)

TV war coverage was, and is, a long way from Vietnam in more than time and distance. Back then, there was a Fairness Doctrine (broadcasting in the public interest). Back then, journalists tended to take their "afflict the comfortable" duties more seriously, as opposed to their banal goals today: getting access to the powerful and engaging in he said/she said debates instead of proactively digging for the truth. It was Sandy Socolow who produced the famous Morley Safer film segment that showed American troops setting fire to a Vietnam village, which sparked the previously lacking public outrage and hastened the end of the war. Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam himself, came back, urged a withdrawal of troops in the name of human decency, and caused LBJ to realize that since he'd lost Cronkite, he'd lost America.

Sandy Socolow (his last name is Russian for "eagle" or "falcon," says Nan) worked with Cronkite almost continuously from the time he arrived at CBS in the mid-50s until Cronkite's own retirement. As Bruce Weber chronicles in his excellent New York Times obituary, Socolow risked his job by producing Cronkite's succinct and damning overview of the then-obscure Watergate scandal:
Less than two weeks before the presidential election, the “Evening News” broadcast Cronkite’s two-part summation of the unfolding Watergate story, largely following the reporting in The Washington Post by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
The first installment, which detailed the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington and a dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the committee to re-elect President Richard M. Nixon, appeared on Friday, Oct. 27, absorbing an extraordinary 14 minutes of the 22 minutes or so devoted to the news.
The Nixon White House put pressure on CBS corporate executives to cancel the second installment of the report, which was to focus on the financing of the illicit doings and on the ways figures involved in the Watergate scandal were connected to the president.
But Sandy Socolow chose to ignore the threatening directive, imparted through CBS chairman William S. Paley, to kill the second part of the story, opting instead to trim it down. The rest, as they say, is history:
The CBS report nonetheless had a significant impact, not least because it gave the Watergate story the imprimatur of the nation’s most authoritative newsman, Walter Cronkite. Less than two years after Nixon was resoundingly re-elected, the Watergate scandal forced his resignation.
Fast forward 40 years, and a shocking 64% of investigative journalists are convinced that their own government is spying on them. Fast forward 40 years, and the Fourth Estate is largely a glorified steno pool. As Maureen Dowd writes in her Sunday New York Times column on the Brian Williams debacle,    
Although there was much chatter about the “revered” anchor and the “moral authority” of the networks, does anyone really feel that way anymore? Frothy morning shows long ago became the more important anchoring real estate, garnering more revenue and subsidizing the news division. One anchor exerted moral authority once and that was Walter Cronkite, because he risked his career to go on TV and tell the truth about the fact that we were losing the Vietnam War.
But TV news now is rife with cat, dog and baby videos, weather stories and narcissism. And even that fare caused trouble for Williams when he reported on a video of a pig saving a baby goat, admitting “we have no way of knowing if it’s real,” and then later had to explain that it wasn’t. The nightly news anchors are not figures of authority. They’re part of the entertainment, branding and cross-promotion business.
So on top of Orwell's 1984, we've got the anesthetizing frosting of Huxley's Brave New World. Distractions and delusions are the order of the day. My response to Dowd:
CNN was actually pre-empting their usual terror and sabre-rattling coverage on Saturday because of LyinBrianGate. Poppy Harlow fumed that it was "too soon" for Maureen Dowd to have exposed Brian Williams as a phony. Poppy hopes he gets his job back, because they're all like family.
I'm glad Maureen mentioned Walter Cronkite, because the longtime producer of his news program died just last weekend. Sandy Socolow was a trailblazer for TV news. It was largely due to Socolow that the American people learned the awful truth about Vietnam. And thus was the war dealt a mortal blow by the power of independent journalism.
Brian Williams, on the other hand, bathed himself in jingoistic glory and glamor. The viewers were numbed and awed, and the horror show went on. Those, of course, were the years of the "embed" -- the sneaky way that the Bush cartel controlled reporters by giving them unprecedented access to the battlefield and all the military toys and garb at their disposal. Chelsea Manning, the truly courageous soldier who did expose the war crimes -- including film of helicopter snipers shooting Reuters reporters to death -- languishes in prison while infotainer Williams is raking in the millions for performing the joint function of actor and propagandist.
There is no anti-war movement because we're not being told the truth about any of the wars. But now that Williams has been exposed as a fraud, let the chips fall where they may, and let all our eyes and minds be opened.
Nan Socolow shares the poem she wrote to her husband to celebrate his courage under fire from what had been, until the past couple of administrations anyway, perhaps the worst assault on journalism by government in American history. It was originally published in the June 1975 New Republic.


RIDING INTO BATTLE,
MY HEART ON YOUR LANCE

You're my peach
you're my prince
pennoned
gonfaloned
tietacked
you joust
mosey along
astride your
falcon steed.

You're my bee
you're my berry
my cufflinked
Charlemagne
of traffic jams
and medieval nights
the modern day
vassal of
Medici me.

Nan Socolow


Three Generations of Socolows: Nan With Her Sons and Grandsons


9 comments:

  1. Great post and great comment to the Times.

    Another commentator from that golden age of journalism was Eric Sevareid, whose mind seems to have been shaped by degrees in the classics and philosophy. Actually, his B.A. was in political science, and while reporting in Europe he took more courses in places like the Sorbonne. Sevareid usually followed Cronkite’s delivery with an essay that put the day’s news in perspective.

    Perspective––what’s that? As for gutsiness, there is more daring adventure in Sevareid’s autobiographical “Not So Wild a Dream” than all of Brian Williams’s Walter Mitty reports.

    Socolow, the administrator, never got the recognition he deserves, I suppose, because he worked behind the camera. A pity pretty-boy Brian Williams is the only dumb domino falling away from the “news team” at NBC. We should hope for the day Brian Williams’s bosses and coaches are bumped out of their high station by a new generation of journalists with the probity of Murrow’s––and Socolow’s––Boys.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This was my comment to Ms. Dowd.
    ""I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book." ~ Groucho Marx

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had never heard of Sandy Socolow until I read about his recent death.

    But I do remember watching “Uncle Walter,” "the most trusted man in America." It was indeed a ritual.

    I will never forget his famous commentary in February of 1968 that turned public opinion against the Vietnam War.

    I cannot even begin to image any of today’s prima donnas - sycophants and stenographers - making any such commentaries about our Middle East follies. They have been too damn interested in embedding themselves.

    Contrast them to the reporting of the “Murrow Boys” during WW2. Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London relates how Edward R. Murrow hired his own band of correspondents to create CBS news, who helped shape and sustain America’s wartime alliance with Britain. Eric Sevareid, mentioned by Jay, was one of them. Sevareid once said, ““Never underestimate your listener's intelligence, or overestimate your listener's information.”

    The last of the so-called "Murrow Boys," puts Sandy Socolow in perspective.

    Many of their names are so familiar. I remember listening to them on radio newscasts as a young lad.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murrow's_Boys

    Gone are the days of tuning in to be informed about local and national and world issues; replaced instead by "Breaking News!"/fear-based ballyhoo/if it bleeds it leads news.

    My sincere condolences to Nan Socolow and her family.

    Thank you for sharing your poem celebrating your husband’s courage under fire.

    “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” - Mark Twain

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Ste-vo: Like your comment a lot.

    P.S. There was a time when television newsrooms were under the management of news divisions rather than they way they are now - within the entertainment divisions.

    Re journalists, please remember I.F. Stone ("I. F. Stone's Weekly" - who, when blacklisted, put out a weekly newsletter from1953 to1971):

    "I made no claims to inside stuff. I tried to give information which could be documented, so the reader could check it for himself...Reporters tend to be absorbed by the bureaucracies they cover; they take on the habits, attitudes, and even accents of the military or the diplomatic corps. Should a reporter resist the pressure, there are many ways to get rid of him...But a reporter covering the whole capital on his own — particularly if he is his own employer — is immune from these pressures."

    http://www.ifstone.org

    ReplyDelete
  5. Karen,
    Thanks for Socolow post which i will read in detail. I went to his obit after Ms. Dowd cited him, I read about him in a book re Ed Murrow, I think, discussing CBS etc. Tho he came after I guess.

    But I can't resist passing this along below re Sunday nyt page 1 article on foreign wealth buying up NY condos. The nyt reporter replied to a comment asking....what's so bad about LLC real estate shells? In a place as 'fair and decent' as NY!
    I know little about this but I was shocked at Louise Story's sentence about the US & NY 'strong rule of law' whatever that means. And I replied. Er, her family buys real estate with LLCs. It's easier?

    Here's the thread.

    Antonio New York 13 hours ago
    The Times found: ■ Nearly half of the most expensive residential properties in the United States are now purchased anonymously through shell companies. -
    However, beside privacy, such shell companies are generally set up to limit exposure to possible lawsuits and to US inheritance taxes.
    It does not mean that foreign undesirable are tolerated.
    While no place is perfect, I don`t know of any other city where fairness and the rules of law and decency are more respected and feared more than in New York City.

    FlagReply 2Recommend Share this comment on FacebookShare this comment on Twitter
    Louise Story is an NYTimes reporter Investigations Reporter 10 hours ago
    Antonio,
    Indeed with how widespread purchasing through shell companies has become, there are a wide variety of reasons people use them, such as avoiding exposure to suits and for inheritance reasons. In fact, I know about the decision to use an LLC to purchase real estate because my family has done so. The property was purchased by several family members and the LLC was the easiest way to handle a multi-party transaction. You are right to note that rule of law in New York - and in the US in general - is among the strongest it is in the world. It's good to look at these things in a global context.
    Thanks for reading,
    Louise

    FlagIn Reply to Antonio Reply 6Recommend Share this comment on FacebookShare this comment on Twitter


    Meredith NYC Pending Approval
    Louise,
    I’m taken aback. "You are right to note that rule of law in New York - and in the US in general - is among the strongest it is in the world. It's good to look at these things in a global context."

    What strong laws? The ones that protect NY’s working and middle class from one of he widest wealth gaps in the nation? That protect minorities from police killing them? This from a NYT reporter? I'm really surprised.

    And the US in a global context? Compared to what, Rumania, Bulgaria, Russia, Somalia?

    Have you seen OECD comparisons? Compared to dozens of other countries, the US has the widest wealth gap, the lowest taxes and regulations on business, the highest death rate from guns, the most unequally distributed health care, (bankruptcies unknown elsewhere), and a shameful criminal justice system.(highest world incarceration rate). Well, that’s law and order?

    And we’re the only democracy without publicly financed elections with free media time for candidates.

    Er, see Princeton's Martin Gilen's study of who influences most of our laws---they are very strong laws--for the top elite.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Denis
    Your post is lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Here's something that would make Sandy Socolow proud.

    Investigative reporters at the NYT and Guardian are doing reports on a most deserving and rich target - the wealthy. What a happy coincidence!

    'Towers of Secrecy' is a 5-part report. A link to Part 1 is pasted here. It is subtitled 'Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate'.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html?module=RelatedCoverage

    The other is from the Guardian called HSBC Files and it appears to be a 2-part report.

    'HSBC Files Show How Swiss Bank Helped Clients Dodge Taxes and Hide Millions'

    'Data in Massive Cache of Leaked Secret Bank Account Files Lift Lid on Questionable Practices at Subsidiary of One of World’s Biggest Financial Institutions'

    http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-files-expose-swiss-bank-clients-dodge-taxes-hide-millions

    ReplyDelete
  8. Karen, thank you for your post on Sandy Socolow.

    Did you read the nyt page 1 article on feb 8, Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to NY Elite Real Estate.

    The reporter, Louise Story replied to a commenter who said NY more than other cities respects fairness and the rule of law and decency. The reporter agreed saying NY and the US have strong ‘rule of law’. Her own family uses LLC real estate purchases.

    Here’s the thread

    Antonio New York Yesterday
    The Times found: ■ Nearly half of the most expensive residential properties in the United States are now purchased anonymously through shell companies. -
    However, beside privacy, such shell companies are generally set up to limit exposure to possible lawsuits and to US inheritance taxes.
    It does not mean that foreign undesirable are tolerated.
    While no place is perfect, I don`t know of any other city where fairness and the rules of law and decency are more respected and feared more than in New York City.

    Reporter reply

    Louise Story is an NYTimes reporter Investigations Reporter 10 hours ago
    Antonio,
    Indeed with how widespread purchasing through shell companies has become, there are a wide variety of reasons people use them, such as avoiding exposure to suits and for inheritance reasons. In fact, I know about the decision to use an LLC to purchase real estate because my family has done so. The property was purchased by several family members and the LLC was the easiest way to handle a multi-party transaction. You are right to note that rule of law in New York - and in the US in general - is among the strongest it is in the world. It's good to look at these things in a global context.
    Thanks for reading,
    Louise

    My reply to reporter

    Louise,
    I’m taken aback. "You are right to note that rule of law in New York - and in the US in general - is among the strongest it is in the world. It's good to look at these things in a global context."

    What strong laws? The ones that protect NY’s working and middle class from one of he widest wealth gaps in the nation? That protect minorities from police killing them? This from a NYT reporter? I'm really surprised.

    And the US in a global context? Compared to what, Rumania, Bulgaria, Russia, Somalia?

    Have you seen OECD comparisons? Compared to dozens of other countries, the US has the widest wealth gap, the lowest taxes and regulations on business, the highest death rate from guns, the most unequally distributed health care, (bankruptcies unknown elsewhere), and a shameful criminal justice system.(highest world incarceration rate). Well that’s law and order?

    And we’re the only democracy without publicly financed elections with free media time for candidates.

    Er, see Princeton's Martin Gilen's study of who influences most of our laws---they are very strong laws--for the top elite.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Meredith,

    I'm working on a post on the plutonomy for tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete