Unique 1977 Glimpse of U.S.A. - Veteran Italian Reporter on 1976 Campaign & Washington, DC

Washington is like a room with an enormous circular window. You're looking all over anything, and everything that happens is noticed. Almost every single occurrence in the world has a repercussion in Washington. As a foreign correspondent, you're really the eyes of your foreign readers. If you can forewarn your readers two things that are important because they are the prelude of a similar phenomenon in their respective countries, then you're doing a good service. Good morning. Operator. I have a press priority collect call to Rome, Italy, and the number there is 65041 collect to the switchboard from Mr. de Medici. Medici. I do not think there is a country in the world where there is so much access to information as in the United States, because it is a matter of conduct in the government to try and respond to legitimate press queries as much as possible, whether it's a regional conference, military or the Washington concern, or they ought to do it on a conference or something can do, and a political comment posted by the principal officers on officers on a revolt. You get you, Colonel, in Washington. Something is happening all the time. Technology, art, individual achievement, politics, all of these things attract my attention because in one way or the other, they have a relationship with Italy and with the Italian leaders. His name is Marino de Medici, and he is one of over 1100 foreign correspondents working in the United States. For 16 years. He has covered Washington and the United States for Il Temple of Rome. He has interviewed and written about some of the most important people and events of our time. I suppose we will have a brief opening statement. I would ask the subject matter of this press Congress to be limited to the trip, and it will run approximately half an hour. I've just completed a meeting with the President, which lasted about an hour and a half, in which I briefed him on this particular morning. In February, Moreno admitted she attends a news conference held by Vice President Mondale. I believe the trip is a success. We've set in motion a process of intensified consultations which will enable our nations to deal with greater effectiveness and to deal with successfully with matters bearing on the security and well-being of each of our peoples, the health of our economies, and our common goal to increase the prospects for a more stable international environment. Is the Vice President. President, Vice President of the both the Germans and I believe the French in this room. Our correspondents from most of the world's leading newspapers, television and radio networks. We can prohibit the transfer of this technology, which greatly complicates the problem of control. Mr. Vice President, what what impression did you bring back from Italy, not only on the economic situation there, but on this short range perspective of European communism? They ask questions, record the answers as they seek to understand and report the impact of words and events on their readers framework. And we thought it important to work to continue that. The President indicated he might visit Japan this year. After the visit here, we didn't talk like might bring justice to the idea of a summit in the United States. But that was one of his in practically for this single foreign correspondent. As for many others in his profession, the American presidential election posed a journalistic challenge to cover the diverse events of American life and government, as well as the national election campaign. Such a period provides the best look at the life of a foreign journalist whose assignment is Washington. Many people tend to think of us as Washington correspondents, but in reality we are US correspondents. During the campaign, I traveled a great deal between Washington and various parts of the country following the political candidates because you must be out there if anything happens. How does this compare to the whistle stops you did before? Well, you know, in the old days, the pencil stops were a novelty. And you had people lined up, especially in 48, when Truman made his stop. I was not there. Even even during the later years. Lyndon Johnson went south as the train, which was called a cornpone special. I know many top notch correspondents. We have worked on many stories together, so we know each other very well. Some of us are conservatives, some are liberal, some are in the middle. But we have deep respect for each other and each other's ideas. And I don't know, our president presidential candidate seemed to have to take one. You exchange a lot of material and a lot of ideas and judgment. So without a correspondent, it allows you to qualify your judgment by comparing information with someone else who knows a little bit more about a particular subject. It just happens to represent no vote. No, No, That's not interested in it. No. But the foreign policy, the exchange of views is very useful as you are getting a feeling of the country and where it's going. And this add something to your insight, to your judgment, to the way that eventually you will be reporting this story doing at least I have to believe, a president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, has John Kerry a Lyndon Johnson. When you go out with the president or even the challenger of the opposing party, you are really trying to verify will impact the man as a real people, not only print press, not the way he looks on television, his attitude, his face is quite different from the behavior that you're used to when you're questioning in a press conference. Something else is visible that is not ordinarily associated with the man because you see what the man is like in different circumstances, perhaps under stress. And then you see what the reaction of real people is to the leaders and to the possible leaders of the country in the. Are you, Leslie, you're running for president of Room one. I saw how many people, many students in a room out of 432. Are you a Democrat or Republican? you're going to make up your mind. That's a well, why are you here? Anybody you can write a story about American society without touching reality, without talking to people, without getting a personal feel for it, I think runs the risk of writing something which is not true, runs the risk of being out of touch. You have to be involved. I came to the United States at a time which was of historic significance. That is the Kennedy administration. I was sent to Washington originally as a correspondent of a news agency, the Italian Press Association. Many foreign correspondents actually started as a news agency man. It was very useful for us because from news agency work, we learned discipline and speed, two very essential qualities in a foreign correspondent. You have to cover conferences, write and act very fast and a great pressure against a deadline. So you're under the gun most of the time when I go to the office, I may want to write an article about the Catholics in America, or even I may want to do a controversial piece on the problem of abortion. Now, these are think pieces which require research, and they take a great deal of time. They are difficult subjects that you have to investigate with a great deal of deliberation. But then something somewhere happens, whether an economic development or a sudden crisis concerning a country, its relationship to the United States, I choose the ones which are important in terms of my country. It's the unexpected that breaks all the time that keeps us working. I talk to Rome every day to find out how much space they can devote to American news and also to get a sense of what their interests are all the time. And Journal columnist I sent by talking to my colleagues in Rome, I get an idea of which stories strike them as significant in Italian terms. But we did a survey at that point. We put a schedule now to the list of possible prima. I have to know what goes on in Italy because I am reporting for Italians, So I have to keep in mind their interests, their expectations, their feelings in the present. Actually, this delay lets you enjoy the retrospective of the ministerial double where accurate we typically will be. Correct, Mr. McGarry. But Domenico seek wistful, wistful. Amanda Domani You're important to many people that you don't know personally. You are in between a world of happenings and a world of listeners. You are a filter for these people. You're like a priest, me, you rotate and the light is refracted and these people get an image of it and they rely on you. You can be very good as a correspondent, but if you don't find a way to communicate trends and habits to your people in terms they will understand, then you're wasting your time. Antonio, how are you? If the president or the secretary of State is holding a press conference in California or somewhere else and I cannot attend, then I go to the Foreign Press Center and they broadcast the speech or the press conference. So I don't have to be there when it happens. And this is open for all of us. It's very useful when the foreign policy will be made at the White House. I have pointed out before that the negotiation about religion is an extremely complicated one. It involves for nationalists in the Foreign Correspondent Center. I find myself in the company, say a journalist from TASS, the Russian news agency, or a French news agency, the major Japanese press service or a Japanese TV network or a major Israeli newspaper. Okay, The Situation Foreign Policy today goes straight into the homes of people. They are affected by foreign policy. Inflation can be due to foreign developments. The lack of a farmer back in the Middle West is determined to a large extent by sales of American grains overseas. The job of a shoe factory employee may be terminated by competition from foreign countries. Now, that's a story which touches me because a lot of these shoes imported in the US are Italian made and the conference is assembled for the purpose of negotiation and the presidential campaign was like a marathon race. You had to keep up with the group and the group took you everywhere by air, by train, even by boat. When I was covering the election story, I went down to Mississippi in a riverboat with President Ford. Perhaps the biggest freedom we have as foreign correspondents is freedom of movement. We can go anywhere we want. I've even been in the underground, the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, with President Johnson in Texas. And you get a strong feeling of the country by meeting people in different states and by making sure that, in other words, they would be fired if it became on this campaign trip. I saw posters protesting against the bill in Congress, which would have eliminated private inspections of grains from the U.S. to foreign countries. Had the bill passed, these people would have lost their jobs. So they had an interest in getting a compromise on a bill which would have maintained a certain measure of private inspections and preserve the jobs and internships point in Louisiana. And only time or are you going to say you might have thought, are you right? Hi, how are you? Nice to see you. Hi, Mr. President. What do you think of the reception of the Italian American community? Really good reception yesterday. Actually, I'm losing time in the market. It was superb. So this is. Thank you. We appreciate it very much. The president, our the life of a foreign correspondent is almost a 24 hour job every day. You have a lot of things happening that are worthwhile. A political story, an economic story, even a serious story with a funny side to it. There are state visits, cultural happenings, exhibit sessions. You are absorbing information. You're getting vibrations on how people think. Museum opened just two years ago in October 74. Was Mr. Hirschhorn from Eastern Europe? Yes, he was from Latvia. And how did he how did he make his fortune? Well, he came over here. Once you get the idea to do a story about a certain facet of American life, you go out learning as much as you can about this subject. And once you find the story, you still have to develop it. He does a lot in stocks and bonds started collecting before the certainly before the Second World War. But in 1951, if I enjoy doing something, if I enjoy writing something, I know that my reader will enjoy reading it. And it proved to be the richest uranium strike in the world. Uranium. What about that? An irony. The uranium which gave power to the atomic era exactly. Gives also power to the modern collector. And of course, this. The US State Department is a very important source for any foreign correspondent. I had a couple of questions in my mind on international economy and I wanted to get your feeling on them. First of all, do you see that perhaps there will be some tightening of credit to European countries sort of you have to go out to get background assessments to make personal judgments. The government people in this town are not afraid of talking freely as long as they trust the newspaperman government to the Treasury and so on. What what feeling do I get? Do you get them that I think that we will favor applications by those countries of Europe, including Italy? I think it is important to maintain regular contacts with your sources. Your source will be responsive even if you touch base only on those occasions when you need this source. But if you develop a personal relationship by which you keep in touch from time to time, when the time comes that you need a quick response, you will be better off to judge in terms of inflation. Where would you say that the best chances lie for reducing the rate of inflation in England or in Italy? Well, most of the structural problems, it seems to me in both countries there are different. As a journalist, you have an obligation not to become stale. You can't sit and relax even if your experience tells you a great deal about how a certain stories develop and you have to try to cover stories which are breaking out there. And there are plenty of interesting stories to cover. For instance, take the space program. Something new was always happening, so you try to keep in touch with developments with the advance of technology, how many generations of technologies are in this room, in effect, just one generation, starting with the early 1940s. And of course, we start with the German anti-aircraft missiles and the rockets that were used. So the you run the U-2, that's the one a little bit of BROWN You have to relate to your readers on the basis of things that they can understand. These are you have to tell them what's happening, why it's happening, and what may happen to them. Because of that event, we use this Minuteman three to show the technology that ballistic missiles gave us and propulsion and in guidance to be able to put these other satellites and space vehicles into space. I hope that next time you'll take some press representatives up to the. Well. Are you volunteering? Yeah, I'd love to go. All of us have covered these space launchings, The Conquest of the Moon. But there are other stories about space. For instance, we have a story about Italians who are very actively engaged in space exploration. Certainly take on the fabric at the Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington. I like to talk to Italian space experts who are working on a joint satellite program. This is an interesting story for Italy and my readers. It's much more important to be in touch with people than to sit in the office. Well, the only way to cover a story is to go out there where these stories happening and cover the people who are involved. The last Q case on the program really that Vatican, as a result of a study by the and the campaign was gathering momentum. The candidates were very, very close and they rejoined the Carter campaign. It's a great pleasure to be back in Newark, in New Jersey, to go to training the relationship of trust, The good working relationship between the press and the government is, I think, fundamental. If you establish a good working relationship with a government. Leaders say, or a congressional leader or a congressional staff member, if you get to know them well and they get to know you where you can talk about almost anything. What he did in the beginning during the primaries. And people have got to feel the Italian-Americans are a very important ethnic group in the United States. Naturally, I have a special attachment to the Italian-American members of Congress, and I have a very keen friendship with Congressman Peter Rodino of New Jersey, right on the strength of similar relationships. I have an excellent line of communication to the Congress, if you will get to know them well. We get our country moving once again. And I see you've been working hard on the Italian-American vote. Yes, I have just fine. I enjoyed greatly the Ilio American banquet the other night. The mean it when they when you say that will be strong faith and in fact with the president. yes, I think so. Sure. You're going to be very close. I think so. Very close. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it'd be wise to take anything for granted. It's going to be a hard time, and I look forward to. Let's talk ways of Charlie Rangel. The made European improvements are as important on this trip, you know, as they are very similar in certain issue. We file our stories from the campaign trail to the cities where our papers are published Rome, London, New Delhi, Tokyo, Moscow and hundreds of other cities. Rich are closely watching American elections. If we fail, our stories describing and interpreting the events and we follow basically two rules. The first is be sure to get a story to your paper on time. And the second one is get a good story to your paper in the mail and regard all regardless of looking for a means that he can sort it out as opposed to fantasy. I don't have illusions that beautiful change will be lamented are Lord, I am not. And that's also due to several problems that I didn't know I had. No social life in Washington is very important because it allows you to develop friendships with people with whom you have a profession, a relationship you do. You see similarities between 32 and in this year, acquaintances become friendships and contacts become good contacts and 40 seconds. Economy is very well. You have to expose yourself to several layers of opinions, specialized opinion. And the best way to do it is either at lunch or a dinner or even a cocktail parties. Do you think that the indeed the temptation of voting against the friend really counts is at the last moment in an election of really voting for the underdog, But the fellow appears to lose those who want to be with a winner. And there's the enemy. I know this is a trend that probably politics is part of everything that goes on in Washington. This city talks lives and breathes politics. From the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to bed. Then sometime it goes to bed very late. And a prediction of something tells me that he'll have voted. The campaign and election are over. But in Washington, in the United States, plenty of things are always happening. For us, it's instant history, but then it is history and I'm and war.