Trying to Censor Reality

By Henry Grunwald

The wisdom of the U.S. invasion of Grenada will be debated for years. The unprecedented exclusion of the American press from that operation requires no debate; clearly it was a bad mistake, an outrage to press freedom and an ominous symptom of a tendency in the Reagan Administration to try to control the flow of information.

All Administrations attempt to do this, up to a point. Actually the Reagan White House has been far more intelligent and helpful in its dealings with the press than was customary during the Nixon age of paranoia and the Carter era of petty meanness. Thus the attempt to fight a little war in secret, out of range of reporters and cameramen, is all the more startling and unfortunate.

The explanations offered by the Administration were preposterous. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger argued that the armed forces could not have guaranteed the safety of journalists. But American journalists have never demanded such guarantees. They have worked and died in the Civil War, World War I, on the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa, in Seoul and Saigon. Weinberger's other reason, that the commander in the field did not want the press along, was a glaring copout. No question was raised about press coverage aiding the enemy; that was wise. The press invariably accepts ground rules on matters of true security, where lives and operations are at stake.

Why should anyone care about this? Many people might assume that the press was protesting against its exclusion out of a prurient or even commercial itch, annoyed at missing some sensational headlines and pictures. That is simply not the case. The press has a serious quasi-constitutional function as a representative of the public. Obviously the White House or the Pentagon remembered the Viet Nam "livingroom war" and the revulsion it created. Obviously they admired and envied Margaret Thatcher's dealing with the press during the Falklands invasion, when the Iron Lady's government allowed only a small contingent of journalists along, under wraps.

It was quickly apparent that banning reporters--and later giving them only a few quick guided tours--hurt the Administration itself. Whenever the press is excluded, speculation and rumor take over. Several days after the invasion there was still determined resistance here and there, but no one knew how much, how serious or by whom. The result was vague and nagging alarm, a suspicion that the world's largest military power had trouble subduing a flyspeck island. However that impression might be dispelled later, some of the damage will linger. More important, the Administration's case for the invasion rests increasingly on the assertion that the Cubans had been attempting to transform Grenada into a sort of island fortress. Eyewitness reports from correspondents might have made that claim quickly convincing. Their absence may cause the question to persist: What was the Administration trying to hide?

Certainly the press has no corner on virtue--far from it. Journalists exaggerate, misunderstand, mislead. They can be irresponsible in big ways and in small. It is hard to forgive those television reporters who, after the Beirut attack, intruded on anxious families with fatuous and cruel questions like "How would you feel if your son were among the dead?" On a larger scale, it can be argued that ever since Watergate much of the press has been too automatically hostile toward government.

But freedom of the press, like all freedom, has its risks. It cannot apply only to journalists who are always responsible or positive. Such freedom would not be freedom at all. On balance, for all their doubts about the press, Americans have usually felt that it represented a pretty good bargain: the occasional outrageous or merely irritating lapse is an acceptable price for journalism's role as witness and watchdog.

Secrecy is addictive. Perhaps the greatest danger in the banning of the press from the Grenada operation is that the Administration will try to repeat it in other situations. The Grenada ban is not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. Members of the Reagan Administration try not only to control the news and the "image" of its doings but also to shape a whole climate of opinion. The Administration has been active in excluding foreign speakers deemed dangerous or subversive. It has tried to discredit as propaganda fairly innocuous foreign films, and it has fought sharply to limit the Freedom of Information Act. To plug leaks, it has made an estimated 2.5 million federal employees subject to random lie detector tests.

Reagan also has moved to establish sweeping new rules requiring senior Government employees with access to highly classified information to submit any writings--books, articles, letters, speech drafts--for advance Government clearance if there is any possibility that they allude to sensitive activities. This rule, temporarily stalled in the Senate, would apply to these Government employees for their entire life time. Had it been in force in the past, it would have required previous clearance and presumably endless battles with censors by writers ranging from Grover Cleveland to George Marshall to Henry Kissinger.

There is no denying that the Government must be able to do certain things in secret. Diplomacy is one of them. So are covert activities, in which all nations, democratic or otherwise, engage. Arguably the threat on Grenada should have been handled by the CIA rather than by the Marines and paratroopers--except that for years now, the CIA has been unable to do anything much without almost instant publicity. But the fault for this absurd situation lies more with Congress and Government officials than with the press. It is also true that the Freedom of Information Act has been abused. But taken together, the Administration's measures suggest a certain mindset: the notion that events can be shaped by shaping their presentation, that truth should be a controlled substance.

All of this does a real disservice to Ronald Reagan. In many ways he is the most open President we have had in a long time. It is hard to question his sincerity. When he speaks, he radiates conviction. He is attempting to do something important about America's position in the world, to restore its strength and self-respect. One can question specific acts and policies, but the overall goal is urgent and valid. That goal, however, is jeopardized by misperception of what the world is really like, what works and what does not work for left-wing liberals have been the master illusionists for years, and their image of the world is as mistaken as any right-wing ideologue's. Reagan has a real opportunity to steer between the wishful thinking of the doves and the vengeful daydreams of the hawks, to introduce more realism into American foreign policy. In fact, he has shown signs of doing precisely that in recent months. The crude attempt by bureaucrats in and out of uniform to censor reality, to manage not only news but history, undermines that realistic trend. It also undercuts the trust the country still has in Reagan himself.

--By Henry Grunwald This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.