On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency

New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1988. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 25 cm. ix, [3], 408, [4] pages. Appendices. Notes. Index. Inscribed and dated by author on fep. Mark Hertsgaard (born 1956) is an American journalist and author who is the environmental correspondent for The Nation. He was formerly a cultural reporter for the New Yorker. His best-known work is On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency (1988), which described the way the Reagan White House "deployed raw power and conventional wisdom to intimidate Washington's television newsrooms". He has written for magazines and newspapers such as Vanity Fair, Time, Harper's, The Guardian and Le Monde. Whilst compiling a feature article for The New Yorker in 1993, Hertsgaard broke the news that the three surviving members of the Beatles were due to issue previously unreleased music from the group's career, as part of their multimedia Anthology project, in addition to reuniting to work on new recordings. At this time, he was granted rare access to the band's EMI recording archives in London, gaining an insight that informed his 1995 book A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles. During a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans in 2013, he was shot and wounded along with 19 others. Derived from a Kirkus review: A review of the Reagan Administration and the generally good press it has enjoyed. Hertsgaard focuses on the fourth estate's presumptive sins of omission and commission. He charges that broadcast and print journalists have consistently accorded Reagan kid-gloved treatment, even during the height of the Iran-contra scandal. The author attributes this failure to disclose what's really been going on at the White House in about equal measure to self-censorship and to the slick news-management skills of president's team. Hertsgaard regards most White House correspondents as tools who have betrayed their public trust to expose supposed assaults on constitutional government. Beyond implying that the press is duty-bound to be adversarial, Hertsgaard makes no systematic effort to define the terms of its accountability. In his speculative accusation that CBS management pressured on-air reporters to go easy on the Reagan Administration, he fudges the very real differences between corporate and news-division executives. On balance, then, a polemic on the question of just what might constitute the editorial responsibilities of a free press in an open society.