The Press: Trapped in the Steel Cocoons

Dawn was breaking over Williamsburg, Va., as four dozen largely unshaven, unfed and unrested journalists climbed into the Jimmy Carter press bus for the 374th time since the campaign's formal launching on Labor Day. Over the vehicle's public address system came the reassuring voice of Gerald Ford: "Hi! How are you? Nice to see you. Good morning. Hi! How are you? Nice to see you..."

Ford's repeated greetings, taped earlier at a factory gate by NBC Radio Newsman David Rush, brought tears of laughter to his weary listeners. As the campaign nears its close, strain is beginning to show. Deprived of sleep and laundry service, herded around by Secret Service agents and local police, forced to hear the same basic speech over and over, the boys and girls* on the bus are responding with mirth and mischief.

When Gerald Ford left Oct. 22 on his grueling twelve-day, 15-state final campaign swing (the "Bataan death march," as some reluctant participants called it), most of the 125 reporters accompanying him had never been within shouting distance of the candidate. They are relegated to a chartered Boeing 707 that flies some miles ahead of Air Force One. At rallies and other public appearances, reporters either watch Ford from roped-in areas some distance away or are kept waiting on the press bus, where they listen to a "pool" reporter's walkie-talkie account. "We're trapped in a steel cocoon," says Larry O'Rourke of the Philadelphia Bulletin. "We're fed what they want us to know."

To mitigate such dependence—and prevent reporters from trying to put their candidate, and themselves, in the White House—more news organizations than ever are rotating correspondents from one candidate to the other. Campaign reporters have also covered the candidates' staffs and even the rest of the press more closely this year. The Washington Post's David Broder, for example, recently reported on the Carter press corps' fondness for wisecracking Trip Director Jim King, who, after reporters found no working telephones at several makeshift press rooms along the day's route, announced that "because of the inexperience of the advance man at the next stop, the phones were not removed from the hotel as ordered. You will be able to file."

Eye-Glaze. Still, both Ford and Carter have an inner circle of permanent scribes who know their candidates all too well. One day in Wisconsin, Ford reached the punch line of his basic speech ("A Government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have"), and the press corps began chanting loudly along with him. Explains NBC Correspondent Bob Jamieson: "The eye-glaze factor begins about the same time each day."