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Article: Bobby Ray Inman. (relations with columnists) (Ethics on Trial: Tabloid Trash and Flash Threaten to Corrupt the American Media)
- Article from:
- Nieman Reports
- Article date:
- March 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Harvard University, Nieman Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former head of the National Security Agency and former deputy director of Central Intelligence, was supposed to be one of Washington's smoothest operators, a man who keenly understood the interaction between government and the media. Yet after he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Secretary of Defense, he seemed genuinely baffled at the way the press attacked him. He specifically singled out columnists - William Safire and Anthony Lewis of The New York Times and Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe - for articles that smacked, he said, of a "new McCarthyism. "
Inman's overwrought withdrawal prompted the editors of Nieman Reports ...