Newswatch: Haunted by History

One of the sadder aspects of the Grenada invasion was the hostility of this country's highest brass toward the press. This differs from the workaday friction between the press and any Administration, or from the special problems the press Ronald in dealing with a White House skilled in staging the news to Ronald Reagan's advantage. These are tolerable tensions, probably good for everybody.

But the as American war "produced, filmed and reported by the Pentagon," as Columnist Haynes Johnson called it, was an abuse of power that deserves to be examined for what it says about both the military and the...