This paper is about Spiro Agnew's speech on network television about the role of television commentators in 1969 from research I did in the Agnew papers and at the National Archives. Footnotes didn't copy into hypertext. For an .rtf version of this paper that includes footnotes, click here.

“The Robespierre of the Great Silent Majority”

Spiro Agnew's Des Moines speech on network commentators




ABSTRACT
Spiro Agnew's 1969 speech criticizing the television networks and network commentators came from President Nixon's determination to change the public mood surrounding his Vietnam policy and surrounding the antiwar movement.
It also stemmed from a genuine distrust of and disdain for the press.
Using the papers of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, this paper shows how his speech developed that fall.
It argues that the Agnew speech showed Republicans they could attack the press and score political points in crafting a political majority. It showed how Agnew really seemed to mean what he said without hidden motives. The time surrounding the speech marked the first time reform candidates Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot crossed paths on a national stage. It also underscored some of the illegal operations of the Nixon White House that culminated in Watergate.


On Nov. 13, 1969, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew delivered a speech at the Midwest Republican Regional conference that marked, arguably, the high water mark of his vice presidency and a deep political accomplishment of the Nixon Administration.
He attacked commentators who appeared on television to criticize the president's remarks and the television networks upon which they appeared as “a tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government.”
His remarks appeared on three national television networks, co-opting the regular evening news. The speech remains among the most famous speeches ever delivered by a sitting vice president.
Its effect was profound. He and the networks received thousands of telegrams complimenting the speech. In fact, of more than 45,000 correspondences NBC news received, more than 85 percent favored Agnew's view.
He often eclipsed his boss in coverage.
A Gallup survey at the end of that year indicated that next to only President Nixon and television evangelist Billy Graham, Agnew was the most-admired man in America.
Agnew resigned under a cloud of scandal four years later, and he is largely remembered for this failure, but his legacy of thought on media bias is worth a new examination at a time when many politicians and authors attack the news media for its bias, whether real or perceived.
This paper aims to look at the context of the Des Moines speech and its place within the Nixon Administration of 1969.
The paper's central question is: Was the Des Moines speech derive mainly from political considerations or did it emerge from a genuine feeling that the press showed bias?
But beyond that, this paper provides some insight into other questions: What was the context of Agnew's speech? What were its central arguments? What were the results of the speech within the administration?
Relying on numerous primary source documents from the Nixon Papers at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and from the Agnew Papers at The University of Maryland, the central finding of this research is that the speech did spring from political motivations surrounding President Nixon's defense of his policy in Vietnam, but, beyond that, it also came from genuine feelings - even a fear - that the press had a serious bias.
The political context came largely from the deliberate public relations campaign Nixon initiated for his speech on Vietnam policy only 10 days before Agnew's speech. The personal context came from Nixon's impassioned distrust of the media and from Agnew's own experience. The idea of a biased press was a theme, though sometimes muted, Agnew used throughout his career and to which he returned in his memoirs.
Beyond that, the speech and its surrounding political context, which included three other vice presidential speeches delivered within a month and a fourth speech not delivered, adds further insights into political communication of the Nixon White House at the time. It marked the introduction of Ross Perot to the national political scene, it taught Republicans they could attack the press for successful political effect, and it was, by the standards of contemporary scholarly writing, a prescient rebuke filled with what seem today as serious, though trite, arguments
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew's rise to national prominence was a quick as his fall back to relative obscurity. Barely six years after first being elected to any public office, Agnew became Richard Nixon's surprise choice to be his running mate in 1968.
Five years later, he resigned from the vice presidency for taking kickbacks during his time as Baltimore County Executive. He was the second vice president to resign his office, the first to do so under pressure.
Agnew was the first-born son of Theodore and Margaret Anagnostopoulos, who changed their names to the more American-sounding Agnew. The elder Agnew, an immigrant, ran a restaurant a few blocks from where his son was born in downtown Baltimore.
Agnew was drafted in 1941, married in 1942, was sent to Europe to fight in 1944 as a lieutenant. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne and in other major actions of the European war. He won a bronze star as a service officer. He nearly died when he jumped from a jeep just before it was struck by a mortar shell. He joined the Republican Party in 1946 and became a lawyer. He served on a county zoning board as its chairman.
Agnew made his first run for office as a county circuit judge in 1960. That election failed, but it marked his first dabble into press criticism. When the Baltimore Sun took a position against his view, he wrote a letter to the editor that showed the marks of his distinct political voice, “There has been a veritable frenzy of endorsements as the vote-seekers grab for handholds on the chosen vehicle which they hope will transport them to the Valhalla where dwell all political office holders.”
Two years later, he was elected Baltimore County Executive, running the then mostly white county that surrounds but doesn't include Baltimore itself. In 1966, Agnew ran against segregationist George Mahoney, who had emerged from a crowded Democratic primary. Agnew won with the heavy backing of black voters and was seen as the liberal candidate.
During his term, he helped pass a graduated income tax, an open housing law and a repeal of a 300-year-old anti-miscegenation law. He worked for stronger environmental laws.
Agnew began to take on a strong national profile the day Martin Luther King died. Student protestors from the mostly black Bowie State University had staged a sit-in at the state Capitol. Agnew took a hard line and had the protestors arrested. Then word came down that King had been shot.
Over the next week, riots struck Baltimore as they did across the United States. The riots left six dead, hundreds injured and thousands arrested. Federal troops were called in to keep order. A few days after the riots, Agnew, surrounded by a phalanx of state troopers and aides, called moderate black leaders to a meeting and rebuked them for not condemning the violence more strongly. Many walked out.
He told the assembled crowd, “I did not ask you here to recount previous deprivations, nor to hear me enumerate prior attempts to correct them. I did not request your presence to bid for peace with the public dollar.” This opening of the speech, remarked his biographer, Jules Witcover, was “in all probability, the bluntest, most insulting opening remark ever delivered by the governor of a state to a gathering of responsible, moderate civic leaders anywhere.”
Baltimore's riots may have marked a change in Agnew from a liberal-leaning candidate and governor to one with a more conservative, law-and-order style. Agnew's first speech to an audience outside Maryland - at a Lincoln day dinner in Youngstown, Ohio - had been one of racial moderation and tolerance. However, one of his last before being tabbed as vice president was to attack the Kerner Commission Report on the causes of racial violence as being sown in white racism rather than simple lawbreaking. Agnew was a politician hard to pinpoint politically, a fact that served him well when it came time for Nixon to pick him.
Patrick Buchanan, an aide to Nixon and prominent among Agnew's later speechwriters, was quietly bringing speeches, including the remarks on the Kerner Commission, to Nixon's attention. Buchanan had argued for conservative Ronald Reagan. Others had argued for a liberal such as New York's Mayor John Lindsay. Nixon went with someone he saw as more middle-of-the-road, Agnew.
Agnew stumbled some on the campaign trail, most famously calling a reporter “the fat Jap,” but Nixon prevailed nevertheless.
In his memoir, Agnew noted how he was rarely in Nixon's inner circle and was distant from Nixon. After winning a landslide re-election in 1972 and with his strong name recognition, Agnew was seen as a possible successor for President Nixon in 1976. Agnew took a few notable trips abroad, including a successful one to Vietnam to set the stage for a transfer of authority after the war there. Agnew was hawkish in his views on Vietnam, and he favored bombing dikes in North Vietnam as a way to end the war.
However, in 1973, facing indictment and possible conviction for bribery and extortion, Agnew resigned the vice presidency on the day he entered a plea of no contest to one count of tax evasion.
Much as his speeches were controversial, the way he left office was controversial: On the one hand, some feel Agnew escaped justice, jail and many serious charges with his simple plea bargain. On the other hand, he prevented a serious confounding crisis in the Watergate affair.
Agnew felt Nixon and his administration had pushed him out the door as a way of diverting attention from Nixon's Watergate problems. Nixon resigned a little less than one year later. In a way perhaps no other American could ever say, Spiro Agnew would have been president of the United States but never was.
In his later years, Agnew adopted a low profile. He worked for Arab business interests, and once reportedly earned a commission of nearly $800,000 for acting as a middleman between Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Agnew published a novel with the Playboy press imprint in 1976 called The Canfield Decision about, in Agnew's words, “a hypothetical vice president who was destroyed by his own ambition.”
He published his memoir in 1980, which he dedicated to singer Frank Sinatra because Sinatra had loaned him money following his resignation. Agnew died in 1996 at age 77.
The Speech.
Agnew's speech in Des Moines happened at a gathering of Republican politicians gathered to discuss political strategy. Agnew's speech was aired on national television during prime time in the slot usually seen with the television news. The speech lasted 30 minutes and included many familiar arguments about press bias, none of which included either the words “nattering nabobs of negativism” or “liberal.” Some of the remarks follow:
* “The American people would rightly not tolerate this kind of concentration of power in government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government?”

* “When Winston Churchill rallied public opinion to stay the course against Hitler's Germany, he did not have to contend with a gaggle of commentators raising doubts about whether he was reading public opinion right, or whether Britain had the stamina to see the war through.”

* “The networks made 'hunger' and 'black lung' disease national issues overnight. The TV networks have done what no other medium could have done in terms of dramatizing the horrors of war. … They have focused the nation's attention on its environmental abuses … but it was also the networks that elevated Stokely Carmichal and George Lincoln Rockwell from obscurity to national prominence.”

* “A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy.”

* “We do know that, to a man, these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C. or New York City … Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism. We can deduce that these men thus read the same newspapers, and draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints.”

* “In tomorrow's edition of the Des Moines Register, you will be able to read a news store detailing what I said tonight; editorial comment will be reserved for the editorial page, where it belongs. Should not the same wall of separation exist between news and comment on the nation's networks?”

* In the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value … to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result … to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitements, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability?”

* “Gresham's law seems to be operating in the network news. Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crises settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike … normality has become the nemesis of network news.”

* “The upshot of all this controversy is that a narrow and distorted picture of America often emerges from the televised news. A single dramatic piece of the mosaic becomes, in the minds of millions, the entire picture. … What has this passionate pursuit of 'controversy' done to the politics of progress through logical compromise, essential to the functioning of a democratic society?”

* “I am not asking for government censorship or any other kind of censorship. I am asking whether a kind of censorship already exists when the news that forty million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.”

The Context
Why was the speech delivered? Was it done for merely political purposes to advance the president's agenda? Were there more personal reasons?
The answer seems to be yes to both questions.
First, here's the political context.
In November 1969, President Nixon was struggling to confirm Supreme Court nominee Clement Haynesworth. The first trickle of information about the My Lai massacre was emerging into the public consciousness. The second Apollo mission was heading to the moon.
But beyond that, the antiwar movement had achieved great strength. Each month for one day - the 15th -- the Vietnam moratorium movement was advocating a day off work to protest the war and to advocate an immediate withdrawal of American forces from Indochina. Agnew's speech must be interpreted in the context of this movement.
On Nov. 3, President Nixon delivered what many felt was the most important speech of his early presidency, defending his policy of gradual withdrawal of troops coupled with diplomacy and turning the fighting over to South Vietnam. In it, Nixon talked of America's “Silent Majority.”
He said:
“As President of the United States, I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who hold that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations in the street.”

Nixon wrote the speech himself and pushed his staff to produce a public relations offensive designed to get support for his program.
On Oct. 26, he sent a memo to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to outline things that could be done to help push the president's visibility. He suggested getting important political leaders in the country to comment favorably on the speech. He suggested writing letter to international figures to provide them a copy of the speech. However, the first item of the memo was:
“An especially effective group should be set up for the purpose of monitoring the three television networks and hitting them hard on the positive side of the speech and taking them on if they take a negative view. I want this to be handled in more than a routine fashion and a strike force is to be set up for each network. In addition, I want a special strike force set up for both The New York Times and The Washington Post and for the two news magazines, strongly supporting the speech and taking them on for whatever critical comment they may indulge in.”

So seriously did Haldeman take Nixon's concerns about dealing with the press that his handwritten notes of a staff meeting on Nov. 3 preceding the president's address, implies a long brainstorm about how to get the president's message to the American without the press intervening at all. His notes include lines like, “have hostile press, have to circumvent them,” “what is missing is a communications gap,” “they're going to snipe,” “come back - hell w/ reporters.” The notes seem to propose regular presidential chats from the private residence, going over the heads of the media.
Then, he writes, in a seeming to-do list, “set up makeup, clobber commentators, esp. NBC, load the switchboard, crack them.”
Nixon had already established a long record of asking for reports on the press.
On Sept. 23, 1969, he wrote Haldeman,
“I would like a daily, brief addition to the news summary … giving a quick run-down on what newspaper and television coverage was given the previous day and night to RN's appearances. The purpose of this is to give us a better yardstick with which to evaluate such appearances in the future.”

On. Oct. 1, Nixon asked Haldeman about crafting a list of people in the media who should not have time wasted on them. On Oct. 7, the president asked Haldeman about his September assignment to watch television news programs. Haldeman assigned his aide Alex Butterfield to run the project. Butterfield found 13 members of the president's staff and of the Republican National Committee to watch the programs daily. The first report, on Oct. 9, showed that the staff thought there was nothing for which an action needed to be taken.
That there was nothing requiring action was something of a theme in the early days of this project. So much so that Haldeman wrote back to Jeb Magruder on a memo where Magruder had argued that no counter action required:
“This is now S.O.P. Hard to believe all coverage is so mediocre as to require no praise and no condemnation; so accurate as to require no correction; so fair as to require no counterbalance. Is it really?”

Again, in January 1970, Nixon requested that the TV monitoring project expand further to include news broadcasts in 10 leading markets.
Furthermore, there is clear evidence that Nixon's November speech was meant to be a high point in his public assault on the anti-war movement and one of building his public persona.
While Nixon's memos of the period show he and his staff can be calculating, mean-spirited, even paranoid; however, Nixon here also emerges as a public relations genius, using every communication tool for the effect of gradually calming American discourse in the best interests of a peaceful country. That American discourse was comparatively quieter in 1969 compared with 1968 may speak to this communication strategy as a successful one.
Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote an internal memo outlining this thinking,
“Step by planned step, he is calmly and deliberately mobilizing moderate opinion on campus and in the nation to counter the growing violence. Any strident or unrestrained blasts would only drive campus moderates into the arms of the hard-core revolutionaries.
“It would be easy to pick up some cheap popularity points by thundering what the older generation wants to hear, but it would only worsen the problem. Hence this phased approach, responsible but strong.
“I point out this strategy in case anybody thinks we are proceeding haphazardly.”

It was Nixon who evidently wrote on the memo, “Seems like a good plan.”
Political commentator Joseph Alsop said Nixon's Nov. 3 speech was “one of the most successful technical feats of political leadership in many, many years. It rather abruptly completed the radical change of national mood that had only just began.” Nixon or his staff had included a copy of the Alsop column from The Washington Post in the President's personal files.
It is unclear exactly how the president's instructions on Oct. 26 led specifically to the Agnew speech on Nov. 13.
Staff memos from the time show that in a 46-point plan for support of the president's speech in the second week following Nov. 3, the vice president's speech was not mentioned, even though getting articles in Reader's Digest, producing handbills for college campuses, promoting a red, white and blue coast-to-coast Volkswagen motorcade, and pushing a television special sponsored by billionaire Ross Perot were.
That memo gives the indication that the Agnew speech was likely something of an afterthought; however, Agnew's communication ability was part of a broader White House strategy. Haldeman, in his handwritten staff meeting notes of early October, wrote that the president had “tried to avoid a fight with doves for 8 months -- now have to.” He wrote that “Agnew et. al. whack hard, president step in later.”
Agnew succeeded in quickly making himself a national figure, which set the stage for the Des Moines speech. The Oct. 15 moratorium set the stage. While Nixon sat quietly waiting for his speech on Nov. 3, Agnew went on the offensive in New Orleans on Oct. 19 responding to the protests. At a fundraiser, Agnew drew his intellectual line.
According to Witcover, Agnew wrote a new introduction to what had been more gentle Vietnam policy-oriented speech produced largely by his speechwriter from his days in Annapolis, Cynthia Rosenwald. Agnew added these words in his introduction, among the most famous he ever uttered:
“The young, and by this I don't mean by any stretch of the imagination all the young, but I'm talking about those who claim to speak for the young, at the zenith of physical power and sensitivity, overwhelm themselves with drugs and artificial stimulants. Subtlety is lost, and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion. Life is visceral rather than intellectual, and the most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
“Truth to them is 'revealed' rather than logically proved, and the principal infatuations of today revolve around the social sciences, those subjects which can accommodate any opinion and about which the most reckless conjecture cannot be discredited.
“Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as the generation gap. A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

Of note, the “effete corps of impudent snobs” line is not referring to the media, a common misperception.
One week later, Agnew delivered a second speech in Harrisburg, Pa.:
“A little over a week ago, I took a rather unusual step for a Vice President … I said something. … I criticized those who encourage government by street carnival and suggested it was time to stop the carousel.
“It appears that by slaughtering a sacred cow, I have triggered a holy war. I have no regrets. I do not intend to repudiate my beliefs, recant my words, or run and hide.”

Agnew's words got him on the covers of the two national news magazines in the same week, in fact, bumping Nixon's Nov. 3 speech off the front of Time and Newsweek.
He was set up perfectly to discuss the media, therefore. Though the speech may have been a quick afterthought to the public relations surrounding the Nixon speech, it was a natural one. The first mention of the Des Moines speech within the Nixon administration is in staff meeting notes of H.R. Haldeman on Nov. 7.
The archival materials at the University of Maryland that include the speeches of Agnew make it unclear who exactly wrote the speech originally. Many of the early drafts are not in the files. It is evident that there was strong input from many sources including Rosenwald, Buchanan, and other members of Agnew's staff. It went through at least four drafts. In the fourth draft, it was probably Agnew who deleted a line with serious racial undertones:
“In recent years on national and major market television stations there has been an intensive campaign to put black Americans before the cameras as reporters and commentators. Perhaps now it is time for the silent majority to demand of the networks that their spokesmen be brought forward.”

Part of the editing process occurred within the White House itself. On Nov. 11, Haldeman notes an action item about the Agnew speech to “take out McCarthy idea” and “quote some of the wives re commentators.”
In his memoirs, Agnew said simply, “For Pat Buchanan and me, the crafting and polishing of that speech was a labor of love.”
In a staff meeting on Nov. 11, top administration officials discussed, perhaps for the first time, how to get his speech on nationwide primetime; there was consideration of purchasing a half-hour of television and asking Perot to pay for it. H. Ross Perot quietly emerged as a national figure during this period. As a new billionaire, Perot, who later fought with Buchanan over the control of the Reform Party, had come into contact with the administration. He proposed and ran a series of anti-protester, pro-soldier television specials and newspaper advertisements. He was intimately part of the public relations of the Nixon White House at this time. Of note, it is during this time that the long careers of these important political figures, Perot and Buchanan, crossed and where Perot launched many of the ideas he pursued in his failed bid for the presidency.
One day before the speech, it seems clear that the staff had decided to try a different tack than purchasing air time, they would push for live coverage by bluster and feigned anger about a lack of objectivity. “Really get this out,” Haldeman wrote, “historic if TV accurate - fair - objective have got to really build this.” He suggests further, “really hit Times, etc., if they don't carry it, call the news - say heard on radio.”
Then there was this cryptic remark: “Johnson could never rally the country this way.”
After the speech on Nov. 13, Haldeman seemed thrilled. The vice president, he wrote, “has a great ability to read a speech. See why people like Agnew.”
There were suggestions to be “very stern tomorrow. Don't back off a bit.”
The president communicated to Haldeman that the speech “was fine job.”
It was a “good day today,” he wrote. “SOBs of nets must have died when had to carry that.”
The day after the speech, there are many cryptic notes of the staff meeting that may refer to the press. In one, discussing working trips on planes - the staff should keep “VIPS off the plane as a matter of principle. Blame on press.” What that note may imply is that Haldeman and staff are thinking of telling VIPs offended by this new policy that the press is somehow responsible. Given this interpretation, the administration was learning that political mileage could be gained by blaming the media.
In the confident glow of Agnew's speech and of seemingly taking control of the agenda, overconfidence in the staff meeting may have led to what appears to be the first discussion of the Committee to Re-elect the President, which led to Nixon's downfall. “Set up campaign committee the P. controls. Let us control the funds,” Haldeman wrote.
Indeed, an early example of the heady confidence in the White House that led to the Watergate corruption is shown in a memo from Larry Higby, Haldeman's deputy, to Haldeman about several projects including press coverage. On Nov. 19, he reported the progress of analysis of important network commentators was progressing, “Bud Krogh has asked our most trusted sources at the FBI to get pertinent information from their files and other available sources.”
On Nov. 14, Haldeman added this thought: “Agnew - have developed a good property. Keep building him.”
In fact, within the week, Agnew would be reigned in significantly.
This pull-back started with the fourth of the series of five speeches Agnew focused on that fall. The fourth was a follow-up to the Des Moines speech in Montgomery, Ala., before a chamber of commerce. The fifth speech, a proposed speech on the My Lai massacre, would never be delivered, killed by Nixon himself.
Rosenwald's original draft of the Montgomery speech only mentioned the press a little. Instead, her hand-written draft talked of civic morality and said the spirit of positivism is as the “spirit of the silent majority.” It contained a few joking jibes, “Eric Severeid's still miffed because the last time I saw him, I forgot to kiss his ring.”
Buchanan and others took her speech and made the attacks on the press the main theme of a second version. It included lines such as:
“I am concerned - as I know many newsmen are - when I see the news media too ready to be made patsies by whoever chooses to hold up a placard. I am concerned by the pseudo-event: the demonstration staged for the cameras that dissolves the moment the cameras move away but that goes out to the nation as 'news' because a good picture is more entertaining that no picture.”

And it included:
“I am concerned because too often the inflammatory statement gets covered, while the thoughtful statement does not. This not only distorts the news; it also and more dangerously distorts the entire political process.” And, this, “the old maxim that pictures don't lie is simply untrue.” This draft also included several retorts to people who had attacked the president and used them by name.
Accordingly, Agnew's proposed tone was defensive and combative:
“We do not accept those terms for continuing the national dialogue. The day when the network commentators and even the gentlemen of The New York Times enjoyed a form of diplomatic immunity from comment and criticism of what they said. That day is over.”

Press secretary Ron Ziegler and White House Communications Director Herb Klein both expressed strong reservations about the speech.
Klein called Haldeman at home at 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 19 to discuss changing it because it would “violate presidential policy and seriously endanger our relationship with those management people in the newspaper and TV industry who support us now and have supported us over the years.” Haldeman, who was watching television - “which I never do,” he joked, agreed.
Ziegler reworked the Montgomery speech and softened it. He argued in a memo to Haldeman the morning of the speech:
“We face this situation: The Vice President has focused attention on a subject that has needed attention for a long time. The other side is fighting back hard. I feel that, if the prime draft is delivered tonight as written, the Administration will be expanding its attack to our disadvantage.”

He called for a “less provocative” address in a way to “bridge a gap in press relations between this Administration and the press that will be long-lasting in effect.”
He added,
“I am convinced and totally committed to the thought that, if the Vice President delivers the second draft … we will accomplish our objective, which, as I understand it, is to focus public attention on the objectivity of the television news media and get them to examine themselves. We have made great gains in this area based on the Vice President's Des Moines speech, but we must remember that the government also has a responsibility to be cautious of excesses of criticism.”

Ziegler's draft was delivered. It omitted the meat of Buchanan's talk with most of the personal attacks while including no references to the “Silent Majority.”
Agnew's Montgomery speech mentioned the themes of his Des Moines speech and added one more media criticism: “The American people should be made aware of the trend toward the monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands.”
Specifically, Agnew mentioned The Washington Post and The New York Times holdings of multiple media companies.
After hearing the speech, Nixon sent a memo to Haldeman reminding the vice president to include the term “Silent Majority” in all of his speeches, something that had been included in the first place.
As Ziegler's memo indicates, and the text of Agnew's Des Moines speech argues, the administration never considered any form of direct censorship despite wanting to manipulate the press. Indeed, some feared they had already gone too far.
Haldeman aide Jeb Magruder consulted with Federal Communications Commission chairman Dean Burch and deputy assistant for Congressional relations Lyn Nofziger on Nov. 17 about the FCC taking over the daily analysis of network coverage. Burch rebuffed the suggestion suggesting instead that some group outside the FCC should do any such monitoring especially given the response to Agnew's speech. If the outside group found anything, the outside groups could present its findings to the FCC for discussion. Nofziger reported that Burch felt the evidence of network bias would be “strong but not overwhelming.”
How did Agnew interpret the speech? As was Agnew's way, it seems he had transparent intentions to merely get the media to look at themselves without censorship. He wrote Burch a memo on Dec. 18, 1969:
“You are, of course, very much aware of the nearly panicked reaction which set in almost immediately after my Des Moines speech on network television practices. This does not seem to be quieting down to any extent. The network spokesmen continue to concern themselves with the 'secret meaning' of my remarks rather than the actual content thereof.
“This, more than anything else, indicates to me the validity of the criticism. For too long the pundits have been preoccupied with their interpretations of what various public spokesmen may have had in the backs of their minds rather than a straightforward report of the material actually presented. It is just this kind of editorializing which brings about the bias and slant that has been so prevalent in recent years.”

In one of his regular recaps of the news to President Nixon, aide Patrick Buchanan wrote the president:
“Those who were laughing three weeks ago are now writing columns about the danger of 'Agnewism' and 'Agnewsticism' to the American body politic.
“Where the Veep is scoring is with the center and right; he has become the acknowledged spokesman of the Middle American, the Robespierre of the Great Silent Majority.”

However, Buchanan said,
“There is no squaring of the Vice Presidential speeches with the 'lowering of voices' the President called for. Second, should the Vice President continue solely on the attack, he risks being classified as wholly non-constructive - and a hatchet man.”

Nixon underlined the portion about being non-constructive and wrote in the margins, “I agree.”
Buchanan continued:
“A temporary armistice on this issue is more in our interest now than theirs.
“The reason would simply be that we have discovered an issue on which we can rally a majority of the country and the South - why waste it now piling up our poll results. The Vice President, in our view, should move on to other issues, where he can be strong and positive. The lessons learned on this month-long exercise, however, should not be forgotten in 1970 or 1972.”

This memo marks an important insight into Republican politics for years to come. Irrespective of whether politicians thought the press was biased, the simple cry of the “liberal media” could be used to score political points in an election campaigns. The reverberations of this discovered technique echo today.
Nixon pulled Agnew back even further back from other commentary. On Dec. 10, Agnew was to deliver a speech at a scholarship dinner in honor of his father. As the My Lai massacre story was playing out across the press, Agnew, using Buchanan's words, planned to state the position of the United States. “The eight years of sacrifices and heroism of a million and a half American boys in South Vietnam cannot be erased by a simple morning of horrors perpetrated by two dozen.”
However, others in the administration argued against it and it went on hold. On Dec. 9, Buchanan took the matter to the President: “I think we blew it badly by forcing the Vice President off the My Lai address on which he has been working for more than a week.”
Buchanan argued that the vice president's speech would help the “Silent Majority” rebut the arguments the left had used with My Lai and would help “seal any cracks” in public opinion. Nixon wrote in the margins, “don't know what else will blow.” Buchanan said the speech would have maintained Agnew's political momentum. “This is vital because in this business either you're going up or you're going down.”
Nixon was worried that Agnew was on his way down. He wrote on the memo “too much of an 'aginer' - will destroy him. Shouldn't have taken on Post and Times. … can't keep saying same thing, will self-destruct like McCarthy.”
Agnew gave a forgettable speech on education policy. One week later, Nixon asked for William Safire to become Agnew's speechwriter, replacing Buchanan.

It is clear that the Agnew speech was delivered as part of a deliberate political process designed to focus energy away from the Viet Nam protests and toward the president's policy, and it is clear that the policy was relatively successful.
But, it was, second of all, born of a genuine feeling of press bias among the most powerful in the White House.
No one in the administration had stronger feelings on the subject than Richard Nixon. It is a common theme among Nixon's memos and tape transcripts:
“RN has the most antagonistic and vicious opposition of the press corps of any President this century. … The idea that the press is militantly viciously against him must be hammered home.” “Someone should point out once and for all, the theme that the White House Press corps is against the President, is constantly trying to tear him down.”

He said that more than 65 percent of the press was against him.
“Some of them might not even be aware that they are reporting in a prejudiced way, but their feelings are so strong that they cannot really hide them. Most of them, on the other hand, are quite aware of what they are up to. While they now and then will throw us a bone their whole objective in life is to bring us down.”

Although Agnew left behind fewer primary source examples of his feelings about the press, he did indicate regularly a disdain for it.
During his farewell address, explaining his decision to resign, Agnew complained about the leaks surrounding his case.
His memoir also attacks the press. He starts his book by writing of his guilty plea and then coming out of the courthouse to attend the funeral of his half-brother only to find the press converging at this moment of grief:
“At the cemetery, the media became even more aggressive, trampling nearby graves to get into position for close observation of the burial. As we left the graveside to move back to the vehicles, there was a similar press rush, and a gravestone was knocked over. Then, while I was escorting my tearful aunt to the care, I noticed the final indignity-a microphone on a long pole that was being held just over our heads to eavesdrop on our conversation. It was hardly the news media's finest hour.”

He said that former president Lyndon Johnson had advised him privately as he took office, “You may have an important office and a bully pulpit, but don't take on the big news organizations. They come out everyday and you don't. Besides, they always have the last word.”
He wrote that his anger over the media had been specifically kindled by the coverage of an antiwar protest:
“I remember how enraged I was when I saw on television a gang of scruffy-looking characters proudly carrying a Viet Cong flag down Pennsylvania Avenue, while a national network commentator ran along beside them with his microphone deferentially extended for whatever seditious statements they might choose to make. … It was an incredible thing to see the enemy flag carried down the streets of Washington and the networks treating the occasion as the display of a mere difference of opinion. … Imagine if this had been World War II and the demonstrators had been marching with a Nazi swastika banner. They would not have evoked sympathy for their compassion but would have been justly condemned for being traitors to their country.”

Some former staffers close to him have suggested that Agnew was angered by the change in coverage he had received during his career. While running for governor, he had a relatively good press, but when he began to work with Nixon, the coverage became more negative, he felt, even as he had not changed.
Another suggested that Agnew was hurt, in part, by the flap he had over his “fat Jap” remark - delivered as one person of ethnic descent might from another -- during the 1968 campaign.

The Agnew speech criticizing the news media came out of a personal and political context of personal enmity against the press and in favor of building a new political coalition.
However, on close examination, Agnew's arguments outside their context mirror many in scholarly press criticism. His complaint of press focus on controversy sounds much like Jamieson's and Cappella's complaints about the press' bias toward conflict rather than policy. His worries about the concentration of media ownership mirror those of Croteau and Hoynes. He said the press was provincial with an Eastern, provincial bias. His worry about instant analysis presaged modern talk radio and Cross Fire debates.
At the end of the day, his arguments after the passing of 30 years seem on target and even prescient. They deserve a re-airing on their own merits.

Conclusion
The Robespierre of the Great Silent Majority, Spiro Agnew, left political office and became an international business consultant. After serving his penance, he might have been popular on talk radio or as a speaker among conservatives or even as a professor of politics. Instead, he wrote bad fiction and became a middleman for Saddam Hussein.
That makes it hard to take his press criticism seriously. Nevertheless, Agnew had serious things to say. The press tends to have an elite bias. Press companies are part of large mega-corporations. The press tends to lack diversity and still is powerful.
“Tonight,” he said, “I have raised questions. I have made no attempt to suggest answers. These answers must come from the media … They are challenged to turn their critical powers on themselves. They are challenged to direct their energy, talent and conviction toward improving the quality and objectivity of news presentation.”
Most of his questions are still valid today with answers remaining to be found.


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Selected Bibliography
Agnew, Spiro T., The Canfield Decision, Chicago, Playboy Press, 1976.

Agnew, Spiro T., Go Quietly … or else, New York, William Morrow and Company, 1980.

Cohen, Richard E. and Witcover, Jules, Heartbeat Away, The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, New York, Viking Press, 1974.

Coyne, John R. Jr., The Impudent Snobs, Agnew vs. the Intellectual Establishment, Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1972.

Croteau, David, and Hoynes, Williams, The Business of Media, Corporate Media and the Public Interest, Thousand Oaks, Calif., Pine Forge Press, 2001.

Jamieson, Kathleen Hall and Capella, Joseph, “The Role of the Press in the Health Care Reform Debate of 1993-1994” in The Politics of News, the News of Politics, Washington, D.C., CQ Press, 1998, Graber, Doris; Denis McQuail, and Pippa Norris, eds, 110-131.

The Papers of Spiro T. Agnew, University of Maryland College Park, University Libraries Archives and Manuscripts Department, College Park, Maryland.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Papers, National Archives and Records Administration, Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

The Nixon Tapes, Nixon Presidential Materials Staff, National Archives and Records Administration, Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

Witcover, Jules, White Knight, The Rise of Spiro Agnew, New York, Random House, 1972.