Good Lord:
CBS’ Leslie Stahl recalled in her 2000 book, “Reporting Live,” that she was instructed not to ask then-President Reagan any questions during a 1986 meeting.
“Reagan didn’t seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly,” she wrote. “Oh, my, he’s gonzo, I thought. I have to go out on the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet. My heart began to hammer with the import…I was aware of the delicacy with which I would have to write my script. But I was quite sure of my diagnosis.”
[…]
“Because Reagan seemed to ‘recover’ – I decided I could not go out on the White House lawn and tell the public what his behavior meant,” she wrote. “Was it what I had assumed at first: senility? Was it an ‘act’ – a way to avoid answering my questions? Was it some form of dementia (maybe not Alzheimer’s)? I decided I couldn’t report on my observations at all that night.”
Nothing is ever quite as breathtaking as the list of things reporters knew, but then decided on their own that the public at large would be better off just not knowing about. Inevitably they dump it out 20 years after it could have ever mattered and then soberly assess how tough it was to abrogate their entire purpose for being on the basis of some asinine logical fallacy they usually invented ex post facto.
Honestly, Leslie, the President of the United States seems totally disoriented, but recovers enough to talk vaguely about screenwriting and you decide that’s just not interesting or important enough to mention? Even if he was faking, this is major fucking news.
Your Liberal Media. All hail the fourth estate: keeping us safe.
CBS almost reported Reagan was mentally unfit in 1986 | Raw Story
Lemkin 