I SEE BY THE PAPERS

...It is easy to march behind the banner of the Times because everybody knows the Times is a great newspaper...

...But I'm afraid that professional pride and confidence in the acknowledged leader of the nation's press had more to do with it than principle...

...headlines sounded wonderful to that who wanted the President to raij again: Ike Does Day's Work Plus More At Night - If the reader were persistent and curious, he could piece together the reports of the President's day and find out that the "full day of work" had been slightly more than five hours long...

...The respect, not to say superstitious awe, in which the Times is so widely held came out in the editorial support its blast aroused...

...Under Truman, Time described him as a roly-poly "pneumatic rubber hose," the President's "croniest crony," a "clown...

...The thread is the general good...

...All over the country, editors rallied around and denounced Eastland...

...But Congress, it argued, should make certain that any such inquiry be conducted in good faith...

...Many of the dispatches significantly coupled the medical report with quotes from Chairman Hall, confidently predicting that Eisenhower would run "if he thinks he is able...

...William G. Stratton's announcement that he would enter Mr...

...You could hardly tell where the State Department left off and Time, Inc...

...As usual, little interest was shown in learning what Times employment policy actually is—viz., that present active Communists are not hired, but each case of a reformed ex-Communist is handled on its own particular merits...

...Or take George E. Allen, court jester to both Truman and Eisenhower...

...But under Eisenhower, Allen was treated respectfully as "golfing companion George E. Allen, Washington lawyer and friend of Presidents...

...In its editorial blast at the Committee the Times conceded—wrongly, I think—that Congress has a right to investigate the press...

...I See by the Papers By ROBERT LASCH Contrived Confusion During the past few months, when speculation over President Eisenhower's second-term plans reached a peak, anybody who tried to arrive at a conclusion based on what he read in the papers had two strikes against him...

...When Truman was refusing to commit himself in 1951, Time reported: "The President wasn't saying, just acting deliberately mysterious...

...Eisenhower's name in the Illinois primary...

...Next day in Washington the "trusted advisers" were nearly trip ping over each other, as the United Press put it, around the White House...

...The smiling President stepped from his plane still keeping mum about his political plans," reported the AP, "but the big crowd on hand to welcome him caught a glimpse of Eisenhower mannerisms reminiscent of the 1952 campaign...

...turned out to be New York Times employes, past or present...

...White seemed to be riding two horses, and he was accused of doing so for political reasons...

...As Gwirtzman said, "It is comforting to know that the educators, corporation presidents, Congressmen and others who depend on Time can draw their opinions from such a clear, pure fountain of fact...

...What matters is whether he has the right to make the inquiry...

...The American Society of Newspaper Editors appointed a committee of 11 to look into the Wechsler incident...

...Attorney General Brownell held a quick conference with Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey...

...It was confoozin...

...24 heart attack...

...The Balancing Act The President's words at a press conference as he departed from Key West evidently created a small crisis in the Administration and evoked one of the neatest examples of news manipulation...

...If there is any protection for the press from Congressional intimidation, it must rest on principle and not on the victim's claim that the inquisitors are acting from wrong or insincere motives...

...But somehow almost all of the former Communists or alleged former Communists they were interested in...

...Eisenhower had put in a full working day for the first time since his heart attack, and the dispatches added that he even took some work home with him...

...The Times then declared that it would continue to "determine its own policies," to condemn discrimination, defend civil liberties, and challenge "the unbridled power of governmental authority...

...Where Lippmann was when the Post instead of the Times was being attacked I cannot say...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, won an Atlantic Prize for his article, "For A Free Press...

...The Times gratefully reprinted these pieces in two symposiums in the news columns...

...It began with the pulling and hauling over Dr...

...All of this activity may have had nothing to do with second-term talk, as the participants claimed for the record, but two news events which occurred almost immediately afterward were so fortuitous that they could scarcely have been unrelated...

...Ike Condition Excellent," was the encouraging word...

...Some of them were noncommittal, some took the Eastland side, and some—especially among the Times' competitors in New York—professed to find no question of freedom of the press involved...

...Basically it does not matter whether Eastland was trying to "get even" for the Times' stand on segregation or anything else...

...Hagerty, with the cooperation of the press, had brought things back into balance...

...He bore down so heavily upon the hazards of ill health in the Presidency and the problems created by an unexpected change of government leadership that a large majority of the reporters present con-eluded that he was leaning away from a second candidacy...

...A radio news commentator was "reliably informed" that the President would run again and hastened to pass on this reliable information to the public...

...As he did in those days, the Chief Executive stood and waved in an open car, both arms outstretched above his head...

...Gwirtzman went back into the files to find out how Time had handled comparable news events under the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations...

...The combination of news developed by the reporters and news artfully manipulated by the Administration cast a fine fog over the whole subject...

...As usual, the inquisitors paid no attention whatever to the vital objective question of whether the infiltrators had actually succeeded in subverting the columns of the Times...

...But most of the comment favored the Times...

...I hope so...

...Eastland and Sourwine had been up to the old game—the old Mc-Carthy-McCarran game...

...The Times expressed its discontent in an angry editorial, "The Voice of a Free Press...

...Just because Dr...

...For the businessman, he had his new program of government loan insurance and other aids to small business...

...Only four of its members came out squarely for the First Amendment and in defense of Wechsler's rights under it...

...So the President's press officer, James C. Hagerty, is entitled to some sort of medal for having achieved, with the cooperation of the press, such a high degree of same...

...Every proposal seems to be tested by the standard of the whole nation's interest...

...If the First Amendment means anything, it is none of Eastland's business whom the Times employs, how it operates, or what it prints—just as it was none of McCarthy's business whom the Post employed, the history of its editor, or what it prints...

...Lasch was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard...

...His discoveries were published in the Crimson and reprinted in Nieman Reports...

...The word went out that Mr...

...In 1954, Time saw it differently: "Through the departmentalized details of his [Eisenhower's] proposals runs a clear, consistent thread, joining each fact and each measure with all the others...

...Makes the rest of us feel more at ease...

...It was the first time newsmen had seen him do that since his Sept...

...When he finished 45 minutes later, he had made little news...

...The trouble is, of course, that too many newspapers have acquiesced in the violation of the constitutional rights of citizens...

...Possibly some editors do perceive more clearly now the threats posed by McCarthyism and unbridled inquisitorial powers in Congress...

...The President's "recovery continued to progress satisfactorily," said the report...

...Ostensibly they were investigating the solemn and serious problem of subversive infiltration of the press...

...If the press ever learns this elementary fact about its own [constitutional position, perhaps it will understand that the common rights of all must be defended by a common struggle for free speech, free press, free religion, and free assembly...

...Secretary of State Dulles, Sherman Adams, and other Administration leaders ducked in and out of White House offices...

...If we who are connected with newspapers acquiesce in the right of Congress to censor on any grounds whatever newspaper employment, we shall have opened the way to a grave invasion of the freedom of the press...

...In 1950 Time saw it thus: "In this best of all Democratic worlds he [Truman] had something for everybody...

...The Post, incidentally, warmly backed the Times against Eastland...

...The Administration & Time, Inc...

...And yet that really is not the issue...

...Then came the tea-leaf-reading period, when the press and radio flung themselves with abandon into the divination of the future from small signs that might or might not have significance...

...Whenever he said something which seemed to argue against the advisability of a second term, some reporter or radio interviewer would corner him and, by emphasizing the more favorable aspects of his prognosis, bring out a story pointing in the opposite direction...

...Same situation, different President: "He [Eisenhower] has skillfully refused to commit himself on 1956...

...The Illinois story, like the medical report, got big play...

...But generally few newspapers went to Wech-sler's defense, and few perceived in the harassment of an admitted former Communist any threat to their own rights under the First Amendment...

...He saw both sides of the picture and tried to explain both sides to the public, but he could not cope with the powerful emotions and interests which caused one side or the other to be played up at various times and places...

...Only a few papers were as careful as the Baltimore Sun, which gave the emphasis to Ike's silence rather than to Stratton's announcement...

...This brings me to my second impression—the essential weakness of the case the Times made for itself...

...If a double arm-wave was freighted with meaning, the President's return to the White House two weeks later was more so...

...Dulles' remarkable self-appraisal, as interpreted by Life's Washington correspondent James R. Shepley—the same man who wrote a book last year to prove that Robert Oppenheimer and others conspired to deny America the H-bomb—created such a storm that Publisher Henry R. Luce was inspired to issue a rare public statement...

...As usual, most of the Communist affiliations charged were 15 or 20 years old...

...Without prior notice, Hagerty produced a new report from Dr...

...In the first place, there was an obvious contrast between the attitude of the press in this case and its attitude in 1953, when the victim of a Congressional inquisition was not the respectable Times but the tabloid, militant New York Post...

...Secretary Dulles' adventure with Life and the brink of war thrice looked in the face brought out one important contemporary fact—how hazy a line divides the Administration from Time, Inc...

...And until the time of decision came he would undoubtedly continue to do so, every time any words of Ike's made men in the street begin saying that it sure did look as if Ike wasn't going to run...

...In the opinion of the Times, Eastland had centered his attack on the Times because of its stand against segregation, McCarthy-ism, the abuse of Congressional investigating powers, the McCarran immigration act, faults in the security system—and "because we have insisted that the true spirit of American democracy demands a scrupulous respect for the rights of even the lowliest individual and a high standard of fair play...

...Or, to put it in the loftier tones of a Walter Lippmann column: "Were it to become the accepted practice that Congress may investigate the press, machinery would exist to nullify the First Amendment...

...Or take the President himself...

...Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall called on Hagerty...

...It has become an unprofitable inquiry and a stale joke...

...Both the questioners and the answerer were obviously enjoying the banter...

...My feeling is that he was an unfortunate victim...

...17, 1955: "Presi-dent Eisenhower's 1955 State of the Union speech had sweep and calm and balance...

...It has become more and more unfashionable to criticize the income-tax level...

...White tried so manfully to tell all, while maintaining a proper scientific detachment, he found himself creating controversy instead of settling it...

...In March 1952 Time reported it with a growl: "This week once again, the American taxpayer . . . was working over his income-tax return...

...Adroitly, he fielded questions about a second term...

...Where Dulles had retreated into pained silence, Luce stepped forward with a bold defense of the Dulles foreign policy...

...Said Time Jan...

...For everyone else, there was a whole grab-bag of social and economic promises...

...Take the income tax...

...Times v. Eastland Early in January the New York Times decided that it had been pushed around long enough by the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, headed by Sen...

...He has not thrown together a hodge-podge of group interests...

...Howard Snyder and two Army physicians...

...How does a President deliver a State of the Union message...

...The committee could not even agree on a report...

...If the First Amendment means what it says, he does not...

...Time's identification with the Eisenhower Administration had earlier aroused the curiosity of a Harvard Crimson editor, Milton S. Gwirtzman, who did what somebody should have done long ago...

...Protection for the freedom of the press rests on the same constitutional principle which is supposed to protect the freedom of speech and assembly of college professors, clergymen, doctors, and citizens of every calling...

...Most of the headlines bannered the fact that the President's name was now in a primary...

...His physical condition as excellent and he benefited greatly from his recent visit to Key West That wasn't much, but it was enough for Page One headlines everywhere in the country...

...Hag-erty put out a statement saying that the President had not been consulted, but when asked whether Sherman Adams or anybody else in the Administration had been consulted, he withheld comment...

...Two aspects of the affair struck me...

...None of Eastland's Business Perhaps the changed response in the case of the Times is due in part to the general improvement in the atmosphere since McCarthyism began to slide off its 1953-54 crest...

...began...

...He did not do the job happily . . . The blow, in full and crushing measure, now lands each March 15 on the chin of a fellow named John Q." How mellowly different the atmosphere in April 1955: "Sixty million Americans have by this week signed their 1954 income-tax forms . . . They did this, wonderful to tell, without riots or protest...

...Within a few days, his name was also entered in New Hampshire, and men in the street were wisely telling each other that it sure did look as if Ike would run again...

...The high point of this endeavor must have been reached with an Associated Press dispatch reporting the President's arrival in Key West...

...Perhaps the Times case will point up the simple truth that, while the press enjoys no special immunity from investigation, its editorial functions do share with every citizen the great immunity from government control guaranteed by the First Amendment...

...This was the conference at which he strongly indicated that he had reached a tentative decision, subject to discussion with his "trusted advisers...

...The second news event which promptly followed the day of busy activity at the White House was Gov...

...Or take the social welfare program once known as the New (later the Fair) Deal, and now appropriated by Eisenhower...

...Some of the ROBERT LASCH, editorial writer for the St...

...To its credit, the Times itself vigorously defended James A. Wechsler, editor of the Post, when he was put on the grill by McCarthy...

...They are therefore embarrassed now to claim those rights for themselves...

...Said Time, Jan...

...21, 1952: "President Truman flapped open his leather notebook and began in his usual flat tone to read his message to Congress on the state of the Union...

...My own view is that no part of the editorial management should, that no part can, under the First Amendment, be ceded legitimately to Congress...

...Although "it elaborated the obvious, perhaps that was precisely what the nation needed,"" 'Clear, Pure Fountain' Or take the second-term question...

...Where Dulles had manfully accepted responsibility for the article, Luce disclaimed it for him, and apologized for the shoddy work of unnamed Life sub-editors who, he said, had written a misleading headline...

...Paul White's extraordinary reports to the public...

...James Eastland, Mississippi Democrat, and directed then by J. G- Sourwine, the chief counsel who has since resigned to run as a Democrat for the Senate from Nevada...

...But surely he is right now...

...At that time confusion probably suited the purposes of the White House staff better than clarity...

...It concluded with the surmise that it would be in business long after Eastland, McCarthyism, and segregation have disappeared...

...For the farmer and consumer, he had the Brannan Plan...