Reporting: On the Scene In the Middle East

It was tough being a soldier on the Arab side of the lines, and it was just as tough being a war correspondent. New York Times Reporter Tom Brady managed to slip past Damascus airport officials, who did not know that he had been blacklisted in Syria. But when he phoned his first story to Lebanon, three plainclothesmen showed up at his hotel and dragged him off to jail. In Amman, NBC Correspondent Robert Conley was picked up by Jordanian troops, who accused him of taking pictures —even though he had no camera. Stranded at airports around Europe, many correspondents never even got near the Arab countries. Those who did were kept virtual prisoners in their hotels; what little they sent out was rigorously censored. After Egypt severed relations with the U.S., all 22 American correspondents were ordered out of the country. Awaiting transportation, they were forbidden to file stories. Only the New York Times's Eric Pace managed to continue sending dispatches.

On the Israeli side, coverage was far less fettered. Few of the 300 foreign correspondents who flooded into the country had trouble getting to one of the fronts in some military vehicle— helicopter, half-track or torpedo boat. Oth ers were shuttled to battle sites in a pair of tourist buses, which had a habit of getting lost in the desert. Israeli information officers joked with reporters, censored their copy perfunctorily, and often leaked news before it was officially released.

Wishful Trickle. The Israelis, of course, were winning, and the Arabs were losing. If the roles had been reversed, so might have been the treatment of reporters. As it was, all the legitimate news was coming out of Israel, and little more than wishful thinking was trickling out of the Arab states; most newspapers decided early to distrust Arab victory claims. The New York Times displayed a hardly necessary impartiality by publishing Arab and Israeli accounts side by side, with little indication of which was the more credible. The paper did get unusually excited, though; for four days straight it used three-deck, eight-column headlines —something that it seldom does.

On the scene, few correspondents performed more creditably than Timesman James Reston. In Cairo before the war began, he visualized the outcome. "An alarming fatalism seems to be settling on this city," he cabled. "There is very little relationship here between word and action. The government seems to be provoking trouble without preparing for the consequences." The Cairo airport, he noted, was more open to attack than La Guardia airport in New York. The men around Nasser, he reported, were more preoccupied with past humiliations than present dangers.

The war ended too quickly for other reporters to display much individual enterprise. Yet here and there, a correspondent came up with some arresting insight or detail. Covering the war for the Chicago Sun-Times, Cartoonist Bill Mauldin reported that at least some Arabs living in Israel were content with their lot and even fearful of Nasser. Los Angeles Times Correspondent Joe Alex Morris Jr. reported from Jerusalem that the Palestinians blamed King Hussein or the Arabs in general for not fighting harder. "But at the same time, there were greetings of 'shalom' to Israeli patrols as they crept up the narrow, sun-baked streets."