Reno Meets Press In Friendlier Confines p.

By: Debra Gersh

U.S. attorney general addresses National Press Club audience
DURING THE PRESS conference following the catastrophic end to the standoff in Waco, Texas, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno saw a change in the media she will never forget.
"I walked into a press conference in which television cameramen, commentators, reporters looked at me as if they were a bunch of hungry wolves," recalled Reno during a recent luncheon address at the National Press Club in Washington.
"Their questions came fast, furious, angry. Their faces were angry as they pounded the questions at me: 'What spin do you think people are going to put on this? How will this be perceived? Is your job on the line?' They almost roared at me."
However, Reno said that about halfway through that press conference, she suddenly started looking at faces that had changed.
"The questions were still hard questions, but they weren't angry questions because it was almost as if we had become together, immersed in one horrible tragedy . . . .
"There was no longer competition between that press corps out there and me, but we were trying to understand together. We were trying to understand what each one of us would have done had they been standing in my shoes. We were trying to understand life and all its complexities."
Reno said she will never forget that afternoon, noting that she was encouraged by that spirit, which carried her through the spate of interviews throughout the rest of the day.
"We can ask the hard questions about life and about public officials' performance, and we can do it in a thoughtful and constructive way," she said.
A member of a family that includes a number of Florida newspaper people ? not least among them both her parents, her brother and grandfather ? Reno told those at the Press Club, "I know you. And I know that you care so passionately about your country, about your Constitution, about the First Amendment. But I know more than anything else . . . that you care passionately about the people of America and how we reach the solution to the problems that we all face in this extraordinarily complex time," she said.
Noting that she doesn't "do spin," Reno said she wants "to try to be as direct and understandable as possible. Alphabet agencies, Roman numerals,
jargons ? the jargon of the appropriations process I'm still having trouble understanding."
She then told the NPC audience, "You haven't helped me very much."
Reno criticized the media for creating the "myth of this lady from the swamps" and called on the media to "make sure that you dispel the myth and engage in revisionist history before it gets too far down the line."
"You make it very difficult because too often you try to make somebody something they're not," she said, adding that the makeup and hair styling forced upon her when appearing on a network television program made her feel like "I can't go on their TV network unless I look good."
Ironically, Reno said she never got so many glowing compliments until appearing on the TV show: "Not about the stuff and substance of what I said
. . . but how magnificent my hair looked."
Telling journalists that "we've got to get out of the spin business and into the substance business," Reno was critical of reporters who ask questions about how a proposal will play, rather than the substance of what the attorney general is trying to accomplish.
Reno also was critical of the media's attempts to stir up fights ? particularly between her and White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum and between her and President Clinton ? which she said were untrue.
"You love shorthand issues," Reno commented. "Even the print media loves [sic] to shorthand the issues. You want instant answers.
"You want instant solutions. You contribute to the hype and the spin," the attorney general said.
"People try to involve a wide range of people in a careful search for important positions, and then they get spit up and chewed and spit out. Right in front of all of the American people," she said.
"And you cause people to be afraid to try and afraid to put their name in the hat. When a person fails, their failure is disastrously portrayed across the papers and the televisions of this country. So people think: Why should I get involved with that business?"
Reno said the press also gets "too specialized."
"I'm surrounded by Department of Justice correspondents, and it's difficult to try to get them to look beyond the Department of Justice. Too many of you specialize in Washington and you don't know what is happening in the communities throughout America. You do not even know what is happening in your own community."
The attorney general issued a challenge to the media and to all Americans ? "to all who have traditionally been at each end of the spectrum of debate."
"Let us go back to the last half of that press conference, where the anger faded, where the questions continued as hard as ever but were caring, thoughtful, probing questions. Let us continue to be accountable to each other. Let us be objective and honest," she said, urging the media also to "understand that this is the most complex time in the history of the world."
"As you write that article damning the public servant, cast it in terms that still create in the young people of America a feeling that they want to come to Washington, that they want to go to the state capital, that they want to serve in every way they possibly can," she urged.