media us His p watching mandato He un taking of JohnI weaned generat nonethel st. John] televisiot P: Is t The Michigan Daily-Friday, July 6, 1979-Page 7 Halberstam's 'Powers' corrupt cant inuedlrnomPagei 5 ing the president. out in that task? P: I take it, then, that you think portant American media. residency made owning and H: I don't know. Iguess so. history is something superior to jour- P: And now that you've written, in g a television set politcally P: Why, then, did you write it the way nalism, that is, the perfection of jour- one book or another, about all of those ry. you did? nalism or at least the considerable im- things, about the big, powerful and iderstood immediately when H: It sounded so good that way. provement of it? ironic tragedy of the American involv- fice the dynamics of television. P: Then there was Adolph Ochs, the H: I suppose. ment in Vietnam and about the rise of Kennedy may not have been founding publisher of the modern New P: Mr. Halberstam, do you know the big important American media, will on television like the York Times, whom you mention what history is? you ever find another topic that can ion of the sixties, but he briefly. You wrote of him, did you not, H: Sure. match those in complexity, size, and ess understood it from the fir- that "One did not think of Adolph Ochs P: What? importance, a topic that can fascinate smiling; he was a man whose tie was H : What nobody buys in bookstores. you for years on end, as these have? Kennedy wrote the book on always tied"? P: And what are all the events that H: Sure. Alfred Knopf has already n and the presidency. H: I wrote it. ever occurred in history? laid down a big difference for my hat all you can think of? P: Is there anv meanineful H: The cold war, the Vietnam War, autobiography. H: Yes. P: Thank you. Incidentally, do these sentences appear in any of your published works? H: Yes. P: Where? H: On pages 316 and 317 of The Powers That Be. P: WHAT DID YOU tell your readers that Philip Graham, the dashing, enigmatic publisher of the Washington Post, did as a 25-year-old lawyer in the Lend-Lease Administration about 1940? H: I wrote, "His principle respon- sibility was gearing up America's in- dustrial capacity for the oncoming World War II." P: Big job. H: Big man. P: Did you mention in your book that some other people might have helped Graham out in that task? H: No. P: Did anyone, in fact, help Graham correlation of any kind between a man whom "one" did not think of as smiling and a man who maintained habits of neatness? H: Not really. P: Why, then, did you write it the way you did? H: Hell, it just sounded so good that way. P: How long did it take you to write this book? H: Seven years. P: And how long did it take your editors to edit it? H: To what? P: To edit it. H: To what? P: MR. HALBERSTAM, I'm going to come to the point. What are you? H: A journalist. P: A big journalist? H: The biggest. P: I want to call your attention to Philip Graham again. How did he characterize the profession of jour- nalism? H: He called it "the first rough draft of history." P: And what did you write about that characterization? H: "There is no better description of the profession at its best." Watergate, and the rise of the big im-