Escalating the Propaganda War

In agreeing to an interview with TIME, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev was obviously hoping to have his words read and analyzed around the world. As it turned out, his well-informed if one-sided comments made the desired splash. In the U.S., the interview and a subsequent meeting with a group of visiting Senators got such heavy TV play that a State Department official grumbled about "Gorbachev getting more camera time than Brooke Shields." In Western Europe, France's respected Le Monde front-paged the interview, while the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, generally considered to be the most influential newspaper in Italy, gave it...