“I won, he lost” boasts Daniel Schorr, summarizing the outcome of his collision with President Richard Nixon in 1974 over his covering of Watergate and its aftermath. “I had survived an attempt by the president of the United States to do God knows what to me,” he tells this columnist in a recent interview.
That happened after Nixon put the then CBS reporter on his now-infamous “Enemies List.” Placing number 17th of 20 names, Schorr parlayed his notoriety into riches.
As he now describes his victory, “It typified my whole career: I tried to investigate, people who were investigated got mad at me, and they never did anything to me. In the end, as it turned out, I got a lot of fame in being an enemy of Nixon, it netted me hundreds of thousands of dollars in lecture fees.”
Now 90, this icon of American journalism divides his career into two parts. Before the domestic segment, he served for 20 years as a foreign correspondent.
One of his achievements as CBS’s man in Moscow in 1957 was getting a televised interview with Nikita Khrushchev in his Kremlin office. “Don’t ask me how I did it, but I did it,” he tells me as he looks back.
He also takes pleasure in an exchange with Khrushchev at a diplomatic reception. The international atmosphere was especially tense at the time and, according to rumor, the Soviet Central Committee was about to meet in special session. But Dan Schorr was scheduled to go away on vacation for two weeks.
He presented his dilemma to Khrushchev: “My capitalist bosses say ‘you can’t go on vacation’ and I don’t know what to tell them.”
Then, sotto voce, the Soviet leader assured him: “Mr. Schorr, you can go on your vacation.” But he added: “If absolutely necessary, we’ll hold the meeting without you.”
With chutzpah like this and a fair amount of luck, Schorr built a career that stands out in the history of American journalism. He owes some of his inspiration to Edward R. Murrow, the eminent CBS broadcast pioneer whose example of investigative reporting stands as a memorial.
Schorr believes deeply in the freedom of the press. He sees this freedom as a basic right, necessary for the wellbeing of American democracy. At an awards ceremony that followed my interview, he staunchly defended the role of investigative journalism.
Against all comers, he will uphold the right of journalists not to reveal the identity of unnamed sources. He regrets that this latter privilege “does not today enjoy widespread public support.”
It did in 1976 when the House Ethics Committee threatened to send Schorr with jail for releasing a confidential report of illegal actions by the CIA and FBI. Letters from the public presumably helped sway the committee not to punish him, though only by a five-to-four vote.
Schorr also deplores the control of today’s media by a relatively small number of corporations. And he is upset that some outlets focus on trivia rather than solid news. Fox News, he tells, devoted more than 13 times as much coverage to the death of Anna Nicole Smith than it did to news of the horrors of Walter Reed Hospital.
Listeners to National Public Radio, will recognize Schorr’s resonant voice almost immediately. It remains strong, although some frailties of advanced age have marked his body otherwise. Veteran journalism professor Alex Jones, at the awards ceremony honoring Schorr, told of restaurant waiters addressing the latter by name as soon as they heard his voice.
About the present condition of the United States and its future, Schorr feels deeply pessimistic. As he looks back to the 1930s and the Depression, he recognizes difficult times. But then, there was hope that things would improve.
In that era and later, there were huge problems. “Yet always underneath it there was a sense of we’ll fix it.” He adds sadly: “I don’t have that sense any more. At 90, I’m almost glad to say─hey, you fix it. I did my part. I’m too tired.”
When I asked about retirement, however, Daniel Schorr issued an adamant negative. “The only thing that keeps me going,” he replies, “is the fact that I’m still working. I’m not sure what I would do if I didn’t have the structure of my day made every day, by reading the newspapers, calling the editor at NPR saying this is interesting, I think I’m going to write a commentary on it.”
His current work does not require much physical exertion, he observes. But it clearly calls upon him to use a great deal of brain power. And that he retains vigorously. Among other things, his memory is tenacious as he recalls the events of a life filled with happenings and personalities of historic importance.
He ends the interview with a definitive statement of his attitude toward his present status: “I find the best medicine for old age is work.”
Richard Griffin