Consequently, I think that that kind of realization has, over the 

 years, made things a little bit easier as far as our relationships are 

 concerned. We encounter people once in a while who don't believe that 

 there's that kind of need. But there is. And in order for that job to 

 get done properly, there has to be some decent relationships between 

 the news media and their sources of information, environmental 

 scientists, fish and game department administrators, whatever. 

 Journalists, by nature, especially since the advent of the Watergate 

 issue, are a little bit strange. If they can sense some kind of a 

 coverup back in the wings somewhere, they'll go for it. That's all they 

 need, just the underlying sense that somebody is trying to hold 

 something back. 



Unfortunately, this is especially true in the minds of many 

 journalists, especially those that are coming out of journalism schools 

 today. Incidentally, 63,000 graduated from this nation's schools in 1978, 

 with not enough jobs. This is pertinent to what I am saying right 

 here. The reason the enrollment has gone up so drastically. I 

 feel--and this is a personal opinion--is the prospect of an incredible job 

 where you might have a real good opportunity to blast a President of 

 the United States right off the planet. One of the problems is that 

 once they get into the first job for about six months, they realize that 

 they're going to have to do PTA releases and write obits and that sort 

 of thing and so the thing doesn't appear to be that glamorous after a 

 while. 



But anyway, if there's any perception that somebody in a state or 

 federal agency might be covering something up, you can expect an 

 agressive newspaper journalist to really go for it. As for the news you 

 might be trying to manage, the information you might want for one 

 reason or another to keep from the public for a while, you may have 

 perfectly valid reasons for doing this. But by just saying, "I have no 

 comment about that, I can't talk about it right now," all your doing is 

 peaking the interest of journalists and their going to hunt. 



Now talking about hunting and fishing, there are classes in 

 journalism schools these days that teach people how to go for that sort 

 of thing. When I was going to school we didn't even think about it. 

 So I think that's one of the situations that you might take a pretty 

 hard look at. I had a very unusual experience about four years ago. 

 In Utah, the Division of Wildlife Resources' big game manager from the 

 northern region walked into my office and said, "You got half-an-hour? 

 We have blown it baldly in connection with something that we have done 

 with our elk herd at the Hardware Ranch. We have made some serious 

 mistakes and there have been some problems created with the bow hunt 

 as a result of this." That's a long and intricate story. The reason I'm 

 saying this is that I just about fell off my chair. Here was an 

 individual who worked for a state fish and game agency, walking into 

 my office, asking to sit down with me and explaining a mistake that he 

 and some other big game managers had made. And he wanted to get it 

 in the paper. Well, it got into the paper, very obviously. That story, 

 a long, involved story since he took the time to explain the situation 

 very carefully, made the division look pretty ridiculous. What came out 



