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A merican Journalism and the Landscape of Secrecy: T ad S zulc, the CIA and C uba
Author(s) -
Aldrich Richard J.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.12
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1468-229X
pISSN - 0018-2648
DOI - 10.1111/1468-229x.12101
Subject(s) - newspaper , secrecy , servant , accountability , journalism , duty , political science , sociology , law , history , media studies , engineering , software engineering
The relationship between secret services and the press is an enduring one. Although the CIA did not seek the kind of salient media profile enjoyed by the FBI , it nevertheless maintained an informal press office from its foundation in 1947. Directors of the CIA and their senior staff devoted significant time to the public profile of the A gency. Their efforts to engage with the world of newspapers divided journalists. Some saw it as their patriotic duty to assist the A gency, even reporting for it overseas, while other saw it as their constitutional role to oppose the A gency. This was especially true during the V ietnam War and Watergate. Thereafter, a more nuanced relationship developed in which the press saw themselves as an informal wing of new accountability processes that provided the intelligence community with oversight. This was ambiguous terrain and its complexities are explored here by focusing on the example of the prominent N ew Y ork T imes journalist T ad S zulc, whose complex relationship with the CIA spanned several decades and connected closely with the vexed issue of K ennedy and C uba. S zulc played a number of roles including outrider, renegade and overseer, but there was confusion about who was servant and who was master.