I SEE BY THE PAPERS
Lasch, Robert
I See By The Papers by Robert Lasch The Sleeping Watchdog ONE problem of adjusting to a new Administration in Washington after 20 years of Democratic dominion is getting used to the new attitude...
...Now President Eisenhower was putting him in the strategic position of being able as commissioner to accomplish what he could not accomplish as pleader at the Commission's bar— much as if a lawyer, having lost his case in court, were appointed the judge to hear it on appeal...
...The New York Herald-Tribune buried four inches of the Roberts story on Page 7, under a couple of pictures which led me to miss it on the first reading...
...Under pressure of these interesting events, which had all Kansas by the ears, the New York Times finally woke up, in a characteristically massive way, and sent a staff correspondent to Topeka...
...The first Associated Press dispatch reported this news dead-pan ("objectively," as we say in the trade), along with the information that Mr...
...Roberts was not a Republican official at the time he did what he called his public relations work, but he had been state GOP chairman the year before, and so had played some part in seating the state administration which looked so kindly on his client's proposal...
...He had handled several cases in which big business had sought an interpretation of the anti-trust laws advantageous to it and disadvantageous to small business...
...The (Hearst) Journal-American published nothing...
...The AP wires carried only a routine report on the Senate committee hearing at which small business interests protested the Howrey appointment...
...In nine of the 19 papers outside Kansas City, Mr...
...Roberts indignantly denied having lobbied for the sale...
...The discovery that the eminent Secretary of Defense had not qualified for his post was made by a conservative Democratic Senator, Harry Byrd of Virginia, not by the watchdog The Tasks of Statesmanship By Adlai E. Stevenson WE live in a time for greatness and greatness cannot be measured alone by the yardsticks of resources, knowhow, and production...
...Generalizations are dangerous, but it may be safe to say that the only Eastern newspapers which gave the Roberts investigation the attention it deserved in its early stages were the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Post...
...I could not find a line about him in the editions reaching St...
...C. Wesley Roberts of Kansas was appointed Republican National Chairman Jan...
...Confronted with these charges, Mr...
...It occurred to me, casting about for explanations, that maybe Dallas just did not consider Republicans news, and yet in the same edition which ignored Mr...
...About a month after Mr...
...Roberts' resignation...
...The New York press invoked the sacred cause of free speech and went into the courts to demand that the Jelke vice trial be opened to their reporters, it being only a coincidence that if opened the trial was expected to yield salacious details which would sell a lot of newspapers...
...Governor Am, an ally of Roberts, blamed the whole affair on the malice of the Kansas City Star's correspondent who had broken the story, but the correspondent made a convincing witness in his own behalf...
...The Kansas legislative committee heard 55 witnesses, and in the midst of the investigation the Attorney General filed suit " to recover the $110,000 Mr...
...Elsewhere—in New York, Chicago, Providence, Baltimore, Des Moines, Washington, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Oklahoma City, and Los Angeles— Mr...
...I suspect that if the Housing Administration had been turned over to the CIO under a New or Fair Deal Administration, or if a Federal Trade Commissioner had been appointed from the radical left wing, the newspapers would have found the event newsworthy...
...Wilson's magnificent show of public spirit in disposing of his stock at what was reported to be a tidy profit...
...II Nor did the newspapers consider that they had an obligation to inform their readers of the pertinent facts surrounding the nomination of Albert M. Cole as Housing and Home Finance Administrator...
...The AP also mentioned that the CIO had objected to the nomination, but did not say why...
...Roberts' Topeka appearance surprisingly enough was not news in any dimension...
...The building was sold for $110,000, which made Mr...
...And yet all over the nation, except in Kansas, newspapers with singular unanimity regarded the matter as not news...
...Boyle...
...hower's satisfaction (that Mr...
...Dulles' ill-fated "enslavement" resolution, had been amply reported...
...Roberts was representing the state as buyer rather than his client as seller...
...But the goal of life is more than material advance...
...The challenge of our faith and time "is the insensate worship of matter" organized in a vast international conspiracy...
...The Post's editorial writers must have had other sources of detailed information, for on Mar...
...The Free Press had room for a Page 1 banner story of the Velde investigation of college communism, and even for a story about a minor (Truman) tax officiai charged with influence peddling...
...18, his front-page story consumed two and a quarter columns catching up Times readers with what they had been missing...
...It was brought out that Mr...
...Possibly the new role of the press may make it more difficult for publishers to make speeches to each other about objectivity and the integrity of the news columns...
...Boyle was exposed, that his latter-day counterpart on the Republican side would have been treated with such vast unconcern when charged with a bit of influence peddling of his own...
...Had he done so, he would have violated a state law, since he had not registered as a lobbyist...
...This slowly turned into a strong feeling that if the law said so, the law was an ass, and finally became a delirium of praise for Mr...
...The newspapers were easily outraged in those days, and tireless in their search for official turpitude...
...17, and resigned Mar...
...The same charitable lack of curiosity which so much of the press applied to Mr...
...It fell to Labor, a weekly published by a group of railroad unions, to point out that Mr...
...I See By The Papers by Robert Lasch The Sleeping Watchdog ONE problem of adjusting to a new Administration in Washington after 20 years of Democratic dominion is getting used to the new attitude of the press...
...Louis of the Cincinnati Enquirer, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Dallas Morning News, or the Baltimore Sun, or the Boston Evening Globe, or the Philadelphia Inquirer, or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or the Cleveland Plain Dealer, or the Detroit Free Press...
...The (Scripps-Howard) World-Telegram and Sun printed seven paragraphs on Page 18...
...Alf Landon publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with President EisenROBERT LASCH, who was educated at the University of Nebraska, Oxford, and Harvard, is an editorial writer for the St...
...The Daily Mirror published nothing...
...The resignation must have come as a surprise to a great many newspaper readers, for the events leading up to it were not given anything like the news coverage accorded Mr...
...Roberts was in the clear), and the Kansas press boiled with critical comment...
...There is no question, of course, that the press was perfectly free to regard the delivery of the federal housing program to its enemies as a desirable state of affairs...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, widely regarded as one of the best of the American dailies...
...Boyle in similar circumstances...
...I See by the Papers" will appear in The Progressive every other month...
...In the nation's capital, the Mar...
...But Kansas was aflame...
...His article, "For A Free Press," won the Atlantic Prize for 1944...
...Communism knows no God and cannot satisfy the hungry heart...
...No newspaper was manning the ramparts of public morality when Charles E. Wilson attempted to slide into office in violation of the conflict-of-interest laws...
...A couple of sticks of type well back in the paper were usually enough for Mr...
...the dispatch was so routine that most newspapers found it convenient not to publish it at all...
...I could not help thinking about the fat, black headlines given Mr...
...it satisfied the client privately and let it go at that...
...Roberts' fee 10 per cent, or double what the nasty five-percenters used to collect in Washington...
...Cole had been nominated, that he was a defeated Kansas Congressman, and that he had served on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over housing and home finance bills...
...Wilson and other defense officials...
...As it was, newspaper readers in many cities must have been mildly surprised when they learned that 20 Senate votes were cast against Mr...
...Many of them slanted campaign news in favor of the GOP, and they are only carrying on the same kindly service when they help cover up what is going on in Washington...
...It took three messages and three replies to get the facts, which turned out to be as Labor had reported them...
...There are moral dimensions too...
...Louis...
...All of the 19 papers used the wire service dispatches...
...But we shall master the assault only by better satisfying the basic material needs of man...
...Yet, as it turned out, he did discuss the matter with state officials, one of whom somehow got the distinct impression that Mr...
...Nobody proposed going into court to compel the Senate to publish Charles E. Bohlen's testimony in support of Yalta, after all of the testimony against it, in connection with Mr...
...it is now, and through all eternity, the triumph of spirit over matter, of love and liberty over force and violence...
...but no room for the Republican National Chairman...
...Still, readers who expect news from newspapers might be pardoned if they looked to the press at least to tell them that this was going on...
...The Associated Press and, I suspect, 99 out of 100 newspapers across the land told their readers simply that Mr...
...Roberts...
...One editorial page editor messaged the AP in Washington for verification of the report...
...Roberts characterized its attitude toward the assembling of the Eisenhower "team...
...But except for The Post, The Times was unique among New York newspapers...
...No newspaper that I know of picked up the Labor story as news...
...In a world where masses of people at all levels of degradation and elevation are going to decide their own destiny more and more, in a world where words like "freedom" and "justice" are meaningless to many, we are struggling to meet grievous assault by better satisfying the basic material needs of man...
...Roberts' travail I found an ample story about "Ike, Porter Discuss Strong Texas GOP...
...The Daily News printed four paragraphs on Page 40...
...Ill As in the Cole case, nobody can properly question the right of the nation's newspapers to look with approval upon turning the Federal Trade Commission over to the interests it is supposed to keep in check...
...Howrey was interesting for other reasons than the daily press had reported—namely, that he had practiced before the FTC for 20 years as a representative of big business, notably the Firestone Rubber Company, and had acted as a lobbyist for other interests...
...But I doubt it...
...It may be a mistake to expect any other performance from the press than the one it has given during these first months of the Eisenhower era...
...I was so impressed with the prevailing lack of interest in the Republican chairman that I checked as many papers as I could lay hands on the day after Mr...
...Here he was, defending himself against the calumnies of his foes...
...Roberts landed on just about every page from 2 to 8 but never on the front page and sometimes on none at all...
...Who would have thought, after observing the zest with which Mr...
...Cole's nomination, for few of their newspapers had given them an inkling of any reason for opposition...
...Cole which did not get into the dispatches about his nomination was that he had led the House opposition against the very housing program he was now appointed to administer...
...Roberts was appointed—on Lincoln's birthday, to be exact—word seeped out of his home state that he had collected an $11,000 fee for helping sell the state of Kansas a building which, so some legal authorities contended, the state already owned...
...Take the case of Edward F. Howrey, appointed by the President to the Federal Trade Commission...
...That was all...
...press...
...These are hungers too, and we alone, we who are free to follow the great teachers, free to believe and free to speak, are the only ones who can...
...If it is hard for readers to get the facts about what is going on in Washington, it is sometimes almost as hard for newspapers to learn them...
...To find the true balance between security and freedom, between initiative and anarchy, between tolerance and conformity, to organize vast patience and understanding for the peaceful resolution of our conflicts, to communicate the material and spiritual goals of life by the example of a superior system of self-management and self-discipline, these are the tasks of democratic statesmanship in our tense times...
...As The Post took pains to point out in its editorial columns, The Herald-Tribune still buried the story, that day, on Page 16...
...Wilson could not both hold General Motors stock and pass out contracts to General Motors...
...He has also written for The Reporter, The London Economist, The New Republic, -and The Nation...
...That was the Kansas City Times, whose correspondent had broken the story in the first place...
...A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, he served for a time as chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times before going to St...
...Puzzling, to say the least...
...And these are tasks for adults, not children, for reason not emotion, for faith not fear...
...It is the urgent duty of a political leader to lead, to touch if he can the potentials of reason, decency, and humanism in man, and not only the strivings that are easier to mobilize...
...Roberts had persuaded the state to pay his client...
...Even then, however, the Associated Press did not see fit to make a news story out of the messages...
...Editorially, much of the press first struck an attitude of fretful impatience over the legalistic view that Mr...
...The essential and newsworthy fact about Mr...
...Roberts had also received a $3,750 fee from the Cities Service utility interests, allegedly for keeping that company informed of pending legislation that might affect it—a service available in less well-connected quarters, according to the testimony, for $40 a year...
...Howrey was a Washington lawyer and a onetime Justice Department official...
...Memory may betray me, but I seem to recall that the press not so long ago was a jealous watchdog of the public interest, applying the highest standards of political morality to men and events in Washington...
...for none was the story worth staff coverage...
...The Indianapolis News gave the story a modest position on Page 5. The Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman, allowing no considerations of neighborly propinquity to influence its judgment, played it on Page 9. The New York Times carried a routine and definitely not overplayed item ("Roberts Charges Plot Against Him") on Page 8. And so it went...
...In The Times for Mar...
...But no newspaper dreamed of suggesting that the right of free press demanded public Senate hearings on the nominations of Mr...
...Democratic National Chairman William M. Boyle, Jr., General Harry Vaughan, the hapless T. Lamar Caudle, the five per-centers, and the mink coat brigade felt the whiplash of public scorn in print...
...Out of 20 metropolitan papers I read, only one considered him front page news...
...Surely, you would have thought, he must be news, if not when he was accused, then certainly at a time when he was on the stand in his own defense...
...After the long, long trek across the desert, 80 per cent of the nation's newspapers have a proprietary interest in this Republican Administration...
...18 story got only three inches on Page 13 in the Washington Post...
...Well, if Michigan wasn't interested, why not Texas...
...Not only did the press fail to report this fact on its own initiative, but large sections of the press failed to report it even when they were brought out at a public Senate committee hearing on his nomination...
...It was the Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, not any conspicuous number of right-thinking editors, who insisted that he obey the law before entering the cabinet...
...Yet somehow a lingering feeling persists that if this is being done, the people have a right to know about it, and their news media have an obligation to report it...
...22 they came out with a rousing demand for Mr...
...Roberts went back to Topeka to face a legislative investigation...
...Roberts accused some of his fellow Kansas Republicans of plotting against him, and obtained from the White House an expression of confidence...
Vol. 17 • May 1953 • No. 5
