The Press: China Coverage: Sweet and Sour

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Too Late. More revealing were the networks' sidebar interviews with ordinary people. Barbara Walters talked with her interpreter, a bureaucrat who had been sent with his wife to the country to work with peasants. Their three children had been left behind, and the interpreter was now uncomplainingly separated even from his wife. That brief vignette spoke a volume about the dutiful Chinese character and the Maoist regime.

As the week progressed TV's pundits gradually recovered enough from their initial excitement and culture shock to offer some sharp, personal comments. After the trip to the army base Cronkite noted that the tanks being destroyed in a training exercise were American and that the division, the 196th, had killed many Americans in Korea. The thought gave him, he said, "a chill up the spine." Eric Sevareid, after touring Peking University, noted that the intellectual level was that of a U.S. junior college. "Today," he said, "China is counter-revolutionary as regards the human mind."

There was so much China coverage before the visit—and so much repetition during it—that some faithful viewers succumbed to an advanced case of deja vu. Part of the problem was the 13-hour time difference between Peking and New York. Live coverage of evening events reached the U.S. early in the morning and was repeated on the news that night. Even the President's visit to the Great Wall failed to provide the dramatic impact that might have been expected, and CBS canceled planned live coverage of his tour of the Forbidden City. "I just thought we'd had enough picture postcards." explained Richard Salant, the president of CBS News.

Members of what Presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler refers to as "the writing press" were worse off. This was partly because the White House favored television and partly because Ziegler, as TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey cabled, seemed to "treat writers as an unnecessary evil." Print journalists complained that they were alone while the TV reporters came in teams with large supporting staffs. Some complaints seemed somewhat petty: TV network staffers were provided with cars, while writing journalists had to use buses.

Certainly the White House staff was only too happy to agree with Chinese wishes to withhold information on all top-level discussions. After the first Nixon-Mao meeting, Ziegler would not even pinpoint the location of Mao's home in Peking, or describe the refreshments. "Absurd," growled the New York Times''s Max Frankel, who was told it would be "fair to assume that tea was served." Arrangements for filing cables were fine. Phone calls were put through in a matter of minutes. But what to say?