Best of all, Carpenter is principled and free of partisan agendas. He isn't carrying water for Republicans or Democrats, capital or labor, and this neu-trality allows him interesting insights. After years of coverage in which even Life magazine referred to the Soviet secret police as a mere counterpart to the FBI, a backlash was stirred when the curtain was suddenly lifted on Soviet tyranny. Carpenter follows his argument into criticism of strict-constructionist courts that have deferred to the White House in its repeated efforts to avoid the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. He suggests the courts should have actively promoted citizens' rights in accord with the act's obvious intentions.
Carpenter maintains historical perspective.
Carpenter otherwise acknowledges that government attempts at information control aren't new, and he uses some examples from the two world wars. Carpenter understands the pressures members of the press feel to report the government's daily dole of selected news in times of crisis, even when what the government says is suspect and leads to a gradual erosion of accu-rate perspective. Though these exceptional stories are often cited as examples of how well the press does its job, Carpenter shows that such reports can be diluted into near insignificance by the daily repetition of sanguine propaganda. He cites an alarming litany of cases in which reporters shuttle between jobs in the press and in the State and Defense departments, with even net-work anchors such as Walter Cronkite accepting jobs narrating Defense Department promotional films. Where to apportion blame for misleading articles in the press remains a complex challenge.