Remembering The 1980s: The Press Slept While Reagan Rambled
by Jeff Cohen
The national press corps, inflamed by President Clinton's personal failings, has howled like a wolfpack at the White House for over a year now.
Things were a bit different during the Reagan era.
In her new book "Reporting Live," former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl writes that she and other reporters suspected that Reagan was "sinking into senility" years before he left office. She writes that White House aides "covered up his condition"-- and journalists chose not to pursue it.
Stahl describes a particularly unsettling encounter with Reagan in the summer of 1986: her "final meeting" with the President, typically a chance to ask a few parting questions for a "going-away story." But White House Press Secretary Larry Speakes made her promise not to ask anything.
Continued here: http://www.fair.org/articles/reagan-press.html
