I SEE BY THE PAPERS
Wechsler, James A.
papers which defended the inquiry or the number which condemned it, but the silence which 112 of these metropolitan newspapers—58 per cent of the total examined—were able to sustain throughout...
...For one thing there would be no way of measuring how many other editors and publishers might be subtly affected by this intimidatory excursion...
...But neither newspaper ever acknowledged that effective resistance to inflation might conceivably mean government control of prices or governmental intervention in the affairs of industry and management...
...Furthermore, only about 12 per cent of the population really knows technically what it is about—and when I say technically, I mean it on the lowest level of understanding...
...papers which defended the inquiry or the number which condemned it, but the silence which 112 of these metropolitan newspapers—58 per cent of the total examined—were able to sustain throughout this episode...
...they were primarily aimed at government welfare programs...
...In part this may have simply reflected a reluctance to deal with the complexities of a subject that might be over our heads...
...Both directed all their fury against "government spending"—the current point at issue being the scope of the federal housing bill under debate in Congress, with the President striving to render even more boneless the skeletal legislation presented to him...
...I can only guess that some of the silent ones chose not to speak simply because discretion had become the commonplace ^ditorial habit in all areas allegedly touching that dread domain called "security/* The Times survived...
...Neither newspaper took any serious cognizance of the suggestion by Congressman—and former OPA Director—Chester Bowles that the greatest anti-inflation measure of the moment might be an agreement by the steel industry to reduce prices in return for a temporary wage-freeze...
...Each exhorted its readers to deluge their Senators and Congressmen with coupons (provided for their convenience) calling upon them to stand firm against the monster...
...The truth was that the labor bills had been the signal for a great pushingand-shoving match between the labor lobby and the business pressure groups, with both sides threatening Where is the resurgence to come from...
...The conservative press—magazines and newspapers alike—is crowded with young men, young and middle-aged, who would be happier in a different home, but for whom the area of choice is now acutely limited...
...The Legion of Decency marches on, imposing its own standards of virtue on the rest of the community...
...But from most editorial pages and the halls of Congress came sonorous denunciation of Carey for allegedly seeking to "intimidate" the upright men who had cast their votes against "the labor lobby...
...Virtually no one chose to debate the bishops' statement that it would be equally improper to provide "public assistance" to promote "artificial birth prevention" within the United States...
...Newspapers vary in style, technique, and tone from city to city and town to town...
...Presumably it did...
...When the measure passed the House, James B. Carey, president of the International Union of Electrical Workers, wrote a heated letter to those members of the House who had voted for the bill, warning them that organized labor would try to remember their names and insure their defeat when they came up for re-election...
...Rarely has so spurious a naivete been imposed on the country...
...they could be joyously acclaimed by the same business groups which had long fought any governmental interference with inflationary price policies...
...Most of what still poses as "crusading" journalism in newspapers is safely restricted to those crusades which harmonize with the interests of the conservative business community, or are simply irrelevant to it...
...Time and again the leaders of labor have cried out against the distortions and infamies of "the kept press" and often their indictment is supported by strong evidence...
...Men will die to protect their property...
...If the American Republic already has passed into the democratic phase—meaning that the mob has begun to rule—the dictator cannot be far behind...
...they simply ha p pen to be less and less representative of a press which is overwhelmingly owned and operated by conservative Republicans (or conservative South ern Democrats) who fix the basic rules and determine the limits of political debate...
...It is a press that has grown gener ally comfortable, fat, and self-right eous and which, with noteworthy ex ceptions, voices the prejudices and preconceptions of entrenched wealth and caste rather than the passion for justice which we associate with our best journalistic traditions...
...Many newspapers met the whole problem editorially by acting as if it had not arisen, or by observing that there was much to be said on all sides, and perhaps the less said the better...
...The reasons for this are many and varied but we can see that the public does not have much, if any, information in this field to make intelligent decisions...
...But most of the press had little appetite for "moderation" on this front...
...But it was in the same interval that an abortive Senate inquiry into the machinations of the oil lobby oc curred...
...While a few of its staff suffered prolonged harassment as a result of their invocation of the First Amendment, there were those who serenely pointed out soon afterward that the whole incident was relatively trivial because all the news that was fit to print was still being printed...
...labor, the late Samuel Gompers: "Punish your enemies and reward your friends...
...But they grow older each year, and their standards of living rise while the economics of journalism becomes more restrictive...
...There is also the timidity with wliich much of the press has approached the fateful matters of nuclear tests and fallout...
...In the summer of 1959, for example, the New York World-Telegram and Sun (Scripps-Howard) and the Jour-nal-American (Hearst) embarked on parallel — nay, competitive — "crusades" to save the nation from inflation...
...Nothing in Carey's letter departed from the dictum of a noted conservative leader of U.S...
...What mattered even more was the revelation of the degree to which the sickness of "non-speak" had afflicted the lords and ladies of the press in questions deeply involving the liberties of Americans...
...Plainly it is a freer press than any existing in Communist or Fascist countries, where editors share the common slavery of the populace, but that is no ground for continuous selfcongratulation...
...It does so by obeisance to such untouchables as J. Edgar Hoover (and Hoover, Herbert), or by use of the word "planning" as an epithet...
...the President had made it plain in 1956 that he resented popular debate over the continuance of the tests...
...Property rights are an essential part of civil rights...
...It also does so by the selection of its spheres of interest, and by the exclusion of some issues from the public forum...
...And I use the word "fix" advisedly...
...It is a press far more forthright in combating tyranny in Hungary than in waging the fight for freedom in the United States...
...These newspaper crusades were entirely specialized...
...Most memorable about the episode insofar as the press was concerned was a sequel to it...
...When it sought, with the help of Cardinal Spellman, to impose a ban on the film Baby Doll on enlightened old New York, the editorial pages were distinguished by almost total speechlessness...
...Although the point must have been lost on many newspaper readers, the issue was not whether corrupt and oppressive union practices should be subjected to legislative control...
...I know that such men exist...
...It perished with hardly a word of mourning from the same press which has derived so much head line fun out of disclosure of union corruption...
...Many newspapers are now owned and run by men and women whose sole or primary concern is the business office, whose driving mission is to avoid any escapades that might disturb the serene flow of profits, and whose personal conservatism in politics coincides happily with the predilections of the major advertising institutions...
...It is a press that confuses independence with the economic rights of ownership and too often feels a furtive kinship with the manifesto voiced by Thomas Waring, editor of the News and Courier in Charleston, S.C.: "Though our country may be spared firing squads and barb-wire camps, tax bills are already biting deep into the personal property of the citizens...
...Ironically, the issue was debated with conspicuous freedom in many Catholic publications even while most non-sectarian editors and publishers were paralyzed by fear of offending the "Catholic vote...
...There was great journalistic acclaim when the President, who had so often avowed his reluctance to comment on "pending" legislation, took the air to tell the country that not since Gettysburg had we confronted so grave a decision, a desecration of history of which even the National Association of Manufacturers had been incapable...
...But that was not the point...
...One may acknowledge a certain instinctive public tendency to avoid close entanglement with fallout data, just as heavy smokers may often decline to read all the detailed medical testimony indicating a linkage between lung cancer and cigarettes...
...As Earl Ubell, science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, noted in a broadcast in 1959: "The National Association of Science Writers and, indeed, the Atomic Energy Commission itself have made two surveys which show definitely that at least one-third of the nation does not know and has never heard—I have to repeat that— has never heard—of radioactive fallout from an atomic bomb...
...Madison Avenue harbors others who still occasionally dream of more creative endeavors than the promotion of toothpaste...
...But a liberal political movement—whether it be called Americans for Democratic Action or by some other name, or whether it represented a Democratic Party freed of its most conservative elements— might well provide the general auspices under which such a venture could be promoted...
...It is a press generally more concerned with the tax privileges of fat cats than with the care and feeding of any underdog...
...Birth control also ranks high on the list of taboo matters...
...There is nothing mechanically or financially impossible about such a venture, I am convinced, but there are many reasons why the idea has been rejected each time that it has been advanced...
...In Syracuse both daily newspapers—the Post Standard and the Herald Journal—rejected all advertisements for the movie, a capitulation which was perhaps more honorable than the performance of other papers in other places which first accepted the ads and then declined to resist the censors...
...The one great untapped resource of sponsorship for a newspaper renascence would, at first glance, appear to be the organized labor movement...
...That was the heart of the difference between the Landrum-Griffin bill and the more moderate measures before the House...
...the issue was whether legislation ostensibly framed to achieve those results should in fact obstruct the efforts of unions to organize workers still unorganized...
...The conflict over labor legislation in the summer of 1959 demonstrated anew the surviving editorial lust of many newspapers for an old-fashioned drive against unions...
...Did this mean an opposition to federal grants for hospitals in which birth control information was made available to (those whose lives might be imperiled by pregnancy...
...Of one thing I am certain: there is no shortage of talent for new enterprises in liberal journalism...
...There was a concerted rallying behind the extreme Landrum-Griffin measure, a product of the perennial meeting of minds between conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats...
...but political leaders preferred not to explore such ramifications of the question and most of the press seemed equally reticent about pursuing them...
...Even the spacious editorial columns of the New York Times found no room for the controversy...
...The Democratic Party, divided as it is now, could hardly sponsor a national daily without running into constant argument with itself...
...Obviously generalizations do not apply to all, and do an injus tice to the isolated figures who still cherish their independence...
...While the combination of inherited wealth and congenital liberalism is an isolated and lucky recurrence, it hardly seems to be the fashion of the day...
...and when, at one point, the New York Times reported that the Administration had been seriously contemplating a test moratorium prior to Adlai Stevenson's advocacy of the move, few newspapers displayed any curiosity about this extraordinary hint of atomic politics...
...Here, as elsewhere, too many men are "beat"—and the ranks of the woebegone seem to multiply rather than diminish...
...Perhaps the largest hope for a new press start lies in a revivified political liberalism...
...the excitement, of course, was increased because the declaration focused the cameras on Senator John F. Kennedy at a moment when his Presidential ambitions were very much involved...
...The predominantly conservative press fixes the rules of debate...
...The answer, one would imagine, would be a daily labor newspaper, perhaps published in a key industrial center like Detroit with local "replates" issued in other major union territories...
...But in fact most of the press has been afflicted with comfortableness, and the "troublemaker" is an unwelcome character around most city rooms...
...Once or twice in every decade a Marshall Field III or a Dorothy Schiff may emerge to start afresh, but these are increasingly rare events...
...other candidates cautiously observed that they did not believe we should "impose" such plans on other peoples but that we should not withhold funds for these purposes if they were requested...
...The special tax priv ileges still accorded the oil industry under the benign rule of the Texas Congressional leadership (and the Texan in the White House) contain the makings of a national scandal...
...When the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States thrust the subject onto the front pages by denouncing what they called a "systematic propaganda campaign" for planned parenthood, there was a momentary flurry...
...In the 1940's, when I was a Washington correspondent, I first heard Sir Willmott Lewis, then the distinguished Washington correspondent of the London Times, observe that it was the function of a newspaper "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" and I have never heard any nobler description of our mission...
...but the scandal remains hidden be cause only a handful of newspapers from coast to coast even pretend to care...
...Kennedy responded by saying that he was opposed to American advocacy of birth control and the use of federal funds for such programs...
...I rejoiced when Dave Beck and his boys were exposed by a Senate com mittee, and I trust the day has passed when liberals endow corrupt labor leaders with the status of sacred cow...
...But Ubell's statistics also say something about the extent to which the press has generally given only routine and unimaginative coverage to the fallout story, and in practice, if not by deliberate design, accepted the Administration's long-held view that this territory is off-limits...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
