Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 198-013
Date: Sunday, July 30, 1972 at 9:00 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")
Recording device: Camp David Hard Wire
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/198-013
National Archives Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/648453108 (NAID 648453108)

This transcript was made by an AI model listening to the recording (google/gemini-3.8-flash) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Speaker names are the model's inference. Verify against the audio before citing.

[0:00] NIXON: This memorandum to Haldeman with a second paragraph, a PS on the one hand, and with the other, Washington Post story, paragraph.
[0:11] NIXON: In uh laying down the rules that only our top people are to talk to antagonistic media representatives, and then only under the very strictest surveillance by one of the people from the Press Office.
[0:28] NIXON: This is difficult to enforce because lower levels in campaign feel that they have a chance to express themselves,
[0:47] NIXON: and uh do not feel and do not uh like the idea of feeling that they can't be trusted to talk to members of the press, period. There's an easy way to handle this, period.
[1:06] NIXON: Deliberately build up occasions where they can be they can talk to friendly representatives in the media. I realize there are not too many.
[1:24] NIXON: Uh, but on the other hand, uh, on the other side of that coin, our major problem each dawn is that uh, as much time to unfriendly press people as we do to friendly press people.
[1:42] NIXON: Period. I want this reversed as much as we can. One way we can, at least reward our friends, is to give them the opportunity to talk to second-echelon people, something that we will not allow to uh unfriendly press people.
[2:01] NIXON: In return for what's done, our staffers will get the satisfaction of being able to sound off about their views in the campaign and uh in addition, uh, the our friends from the press and television
[2:20] NIXON: will be getting something that their competitors will not get, very important.
[2:34] NIXON: There perhaps cannot be clearer there perhaps cannot be clearer proof of the the way the little we will get of the press, the kind of treatment the government gets from the press, in the Nixon and McGovern articles in the Sunday Post,
[2:52] NIXON: today, July 30th.
[3:02] NIXON: The Nixon article represents a totally, [unintelligible] you want to have in it, but uh critical [unintelligible] point that are hardly- thoughtless regard to our campaign parade.
[3:19] NIXON: Uh, the McGovern article by Spencer Rich, as we might expect, is a total puff piece.
[3:32] NIXON: This demonstrates the wisdom of my advice to be much more careful in programming interviews with unfriendly press people, and being with friendly press people.
[3:52] NIXON: Incidentally, when I uh said earlier in the memorandum that I thought that uh we should see some of the unfriendly media people,
[4:10] NIXON: I meant only those who reach very substantial audiences that we cannot afford to ignore.
[4:23] NIXON: Under no circumstances do I want any more time wasted, for example, on John Osborne on the left or his counterparts on the far right.
[4:34] NIXON: It's not because they're against us, but because the audience they reach simply is not important to us.
[4:59] NIXON: Paragraph. Okay, Peter.
[5:08] NIXON: That's the end of the memorandum.