I SEE BY THE PAPERS
Lasch, Robert
I See by the Papers By ROBERT LASCH The Survey That Didn't Well, there isn't going to be any organized professional study of the performance of the press during the 1956 Presidential campaign....
...W. D. Maxwell, Chicago Tribune: "The proposal is remarkable chiefly for its silliness...
...Norman Chandler, Los Angeles Times: "This is in effect an invitation to join an organization of thought police...
...In Sigma Delta Chi councils, as among the editors, the consensus was that you couldn't get anywhere raking over the dead coals of a past campaign...
...Europe Glad The paroxysms of delight which agkated such a large segment of the press when President Eisenhower announced his willingness to run for a second term were not all confined to the editorial pages...
...Under the chairmanship of Dr...
...The facts did come out quite promptly, and one of the most painful of them, to Editor Christopherson, was that the $2,500 had been handed by Oil Lobbyist Neff to E. J. Kahler, who is the business manager of the Argus-Leader...
...Situations would be stale, materials hard to come by, conclusions tentative and partial—so it was said...
...J. C. Council, Tampa Tribune: "The proposal has little merit...
...The ensuing uproar shook the towers of journalism...
...In Rome, "Vatican circles expressed pleasure...
...But opposition had been rising...
...Incidental information: The Argus-Leader had supported the natural gas bill...
...That was the year when Harry Truman, on his way back to Washington for a second term, could joyfully hold up for public view an election night edition of the Chicago Tribune which carried an eight-column banner line in stud-horse type: "Dewey Defeats Truman...
...The dispatch told how...
...Louis Post-Dispatch rose to second the Editor and Publisher suggestion...
...Delivering the William Allen White lecture at the University of Kansas this year, Roy A. Roberts gave the results of his own survey: "Newspapers today are incomparably better, more useful than the newspapers of the past . . . more objective . . . cover the world . . . more responsive to their obligations than ever before . . . have met the challenge of a growing, changing world . . ." It is this kind of smug self-appraisal that we are offered by the profession as a substitute for the scientific survey which was beaten down...
...The work was to be done by researchers under the direction of the American Council on Communications Research, with broad policy supervision in the hands of the Sigma Delta Chi committee...
...Almost immediately, some newspapermen who had been bothered by the "one-party press" charge and its implications began thinking about 1956...
...Erwin D. Can-ham of the Christian Science Monitor...
...Three out of four of these newspapers, the poll showed, either supported Eastland or ignored the whole affair...
...One other essential difficulty which might be mentioned is that if newspapers ever start defending their own rights under the First Amendment they will have to start defending the rights of preachers, professors, atomic scientists, lawyers, government employes, and just plain citizens...
...And all this, we believe, reflects an abdication of every tradition of reverence for the First Amendment...
...The best judges of whether a newspaper is fair are its readers...
...For a time the famous chunk of cash had actually reposed within the walls of the Argus-Leader building...
...And that is how the AP could tell that "Europe Glad...
...Hutchins" became a nasty word...
...F. M. Flynn, New York Daily News: "Almost certain to do more harm than good...
...Could it yield useful results...
...Turner Catledge of the New York Times...
...It was the year when Roscoe Drummond, then chief of the Washington bureau of the Christian Science Monitor, now a Washington columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, then and now an ardent supporter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote: "The Democratic nominee is getting considerably less than an even break in the news columns of the daily newspapers across the country...
...This was the ultimate test...
...Most of them thought the American press was just about O.K...
...By the time Isaacs had collected his own responses to a specific proposal, the vote ran: Opposed 35 Favorable 19 Favorable with reservations 8 Noncommittal 2 On this showing, Isaacs announced that the project would be abandoned...
...Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., of the St...
...If you could organize your research in advance, and conduct it while the news was hot, that would be one thing, but going back over old newspapers quite another—so it was said...
...Lasch was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard...
...Apart from aiming an occasional derisive blast at his old friends the newspapers, he had had nothing whatever to do with initiating the proposed 1956 survey...
...Roy A. Roberts, Kansas City Star: "I can't imagine anything more futile...
...Philip L. Graham of the Washington Post and Times-Herald...
...In London, "British leaders made no official comment but government officials said privately that Mr...
...Which officials...
...In Moscow, President Voroshilov smiled when told the news...
...Hutchins turned him down...
...Isaacs wanted to know from the researchers whether a 1956 campaign study was practical...
...He found few supporters...
...Among those who favored the project in one degree or another were Barry Bingham of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times...
...Robert U. Brown, president of Editor and Publisher, now turned out to be a leading foe of the survey...
...For establishing this fact, credit goes to the New York Post, which conducted an exhaustive poll of daily newspapers in the 100 largest cities to discover their attitudes on the Eastland inquiry...
...One of his arguments was that a study of newspapers only, excluding radio and TV, would be unfair...
...But he smiled...
...Editors and publishers fiercely resented the Commission's advice and everything about it...
...Also, the paper published on Page One a statement wired from Hawaii by Publisher John A. Kennedy, expressing "shock" and "amazement" at Mr...
...When Sigma Delta Chi held its national convention in Chicago last November, Isaacs' committee presented the research report along with a recommendation that a full-scale study be undertaken...
...But their voices were overwhelmed...
...Would the press feel secure enough, confident enough of its own integrity, to tell Sigma Delta Chi and the researchers: "Sure, go ahead...
...However, when Isaacs needed somebody with money who might be interested, he thought, naturally enough, of Hutchins and the Fund for the Republic...
...survey us all you like...
...OP Debbil Hutchins Again A few professional consciences began to stir...
...On Page One the paper published a news story under the headline: Editor Has Tardy Notice The story reported Editor Chris-topherson's explanation that not until he returned from lunch on Tuesday did he learn the facts about the $2,500 that had come out in Washington two days after he wrote his editorial demanding that the facts come out...
...Typical comments from the opposition ran like this: Ralph H. Bastien, Booth Newspapers: "We think it would tend to stultify editorial judgment if newspapers approached campaigns with deliberate plans to equalize space coverage of the two parties...
...At the ASNE meeting in 1953, Irving Dilliard of the St...
...The essential difficulty, we think, is a steady loss of fighting spirit, a deepening complacency, a growing sense that life is so much simpler when a newspaper avoids involvement in 'controversial' issues...
...They spelled out this conclusion in $5,000 worth of detail...
...Marshall Field, Jr., of the Chicago Sun-Times...
...in just about every way...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...Only after an urgent plea for reconsideration, and only after consulting a group of top editors and publishers, did Hutchins loosen up with the ante...
...The answer was not long in coming...
...Ten others, while taking no clear stand, at least discussed it...
...Robert B. Choate, Boston Herald-Traveler: "Impractical...
...As Graham Hovey of the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism has pointed out, some of the editors and publishers who later opposed the survey so bitterly had themselves employed these same researchers, using the same techniques, for newspaper studies of their own...
...That disposed of the post-audit for 1952...
...Could it be done with reasonable objectivity...
...In Sigma Delta Chi, a professional journalistic fraternity which includes working newspapermen as well as journalism students and teachers, a committee was appointed to consider the feasibility of a post-audit of press performance in 1952...
...The attitudes were preponderantly against...
...Out of 193 papers, 112 made no comment—which in this case amounted to a form of approval for Eastland—and 33 came right out on his side...
...By an odd coincidence, this list coincided almost exactly with the list that is usually given of the nation's most conscientious newspapers...
...Richard Lloyd Jones, Tulsa Tribune: "How silly can you get...
...What possible lines of exploration might be followed...
...J. D. Ferguson, Milwaukee Journal: "A waste of both time and money...
...As Isaacs nosed around, he ran into rumors almost at once that this press study had been inspired by that ol' debbil Robert M. Hutchins, whose new role as head of the Fund for the Republic had made him a favorite whipping boy of the editorial pages...
...So the question of studying the newspapers' fairness and objectivity was finally put up to the newspapers for decision...
...The Ultimate Test To meet his objection, the convention recommended that coverage of all media be considered...
...It had been intimated by the Ford Foundation, on being approached to finance the project at an estimated cost of $650,000, that a survey supported by the leaders of the press stood a much better chance of getting funds than one under heavy editorial fire...
...Thirty-five editorial pages, according to the Post count, expressed opposition...
...The researchers told him that it would take $5,000 to answer his questions comprehensively...
...The need for money arose after Isaacs had met with a committee from the Council on Communications Research of the Association for Education in Journalism...
...In Paris, "French officials expressed pleasure privately...
...In West Germany, "associates" of Chancellor Adenauer said he was "highly pleased...
...As Editor and Publisher noted, one of the canons of journalism of the American Society of Newspaper Editors reads: "Partisanship in the news columns is subversive of a fundamental principle of the profession...
...James M. Cox, Jr., Cox Newspapers: "The press has been unfairly charged with partisanship by left-wing spokesmen and a study would be a propaganda sounding board from these quarters...
...To meet other objections, Isaacs was instructed to seek the opinions of leading editors and publishers...
...Recount When I discussed the Eastland Committee investigation of the New York Times in The Progressive for March, I noted that far more newspapers had gone to the defense of the highly respectable Times than had rallied around James A. Wechsler, editor of the New York Post, when he was under similar attack from Senator McCarthy...
...Must have been glad...
...Last year, Sigma Delta Chi appointed a committee headed by Norman Isaacs of the Louisville Times to look into the feasibility of a jbr<?-audit for 1956...
...John Cowles of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, won an Atlantic Prize for his article, "For A Free Press...
...That's definite...
...J. G. Stahlman, Nashville Banner: "While soul searching may be a good thing in many instances it should be done by ourselves, without outsiders...
...That was the year when a Commission on Freedom of the Press, chaired by Robert M. Hutchins and financed by, of all people, Henry Luce, of the Time-Life-Fortune empire, issued a report which, in effect, told the nation's newspapers that they could do better...
...True, he said nothing...
...The rest of the story is that even the Times failed to elicit from the nation's major dailies as a whole anything like a majority stand against Senator Eastland's abuse of the Congressional investigating power...
...Things got so bad in 1952 that even the house organ of the newspaper trade, Editor and Publisher, proposed shortly after the election that an "impartial, extensive survey be made to reveal the exact degree of fairness or lack of it in this camROBERT LASCH, editorial writer for the St...
...Editor and Publisher, without waiting for Isaacs to get out a detailed prospectus on which the press leaders would be asked to pass judgment, rushed into the breach with a quick poll of its own...
...Somebody ought to find out, urged E fe P, how the press had lived up to this canon in 1952...
...journalism...
...Next day, the Argus-Leader published another editorial by Editor Christopherson, explaining that "nobody was more surprised" than he to learn these facts, and that the editorial policy of the Argus-Leader is determined by the editor, not by the business manager...
...Nobody is going to check up, scientifically, to learn whether the charges of a "one-party press" are true or false...
...This group, representing principally the nation's journalism schools, had engaged in many newspaper study projects...
...Raymond B. Nixon, professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota and editor of Journalism Quarterly, the research specialists, 26 of them, took a look at the problem and decided that "a significant study of the role and performance of daily newspapers in covering the news of the 1956 Presidential campaign can be made...
...Then came the campaign of 1948, when so many newspapers handed the election to Thomas E. Dewey before it was held, and handled the news of President Truman's campaign accordingly...
...Paul Block, Jr., of the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Sevellon Brown 3d of the Providence Journal and Bulletin...
...Eisenhower's decision was good for the free world...
...Nobody is going to make a systematic survey of news coverage of the major candidates during the heat of the campaign...
...That's final...
...J. R. Knowland, Oakland Tribune: "We are frankly belittling ourselves in this movement...
...I agree with the Post's editorial comment that "the silence is the most unpleasant sound of all...
...Then came 1952...
...Nothing came of this...
...If they spoke privately, how could the AP quote them...
...This was true, but it is not the whole story...
...Much of the daily press is showing marked one-sidedness in covering the news of this campaign...
...Editor Has Tardy Notice One of the most amusing sidelights on the $2,500 which Senator Case of South Dakota did not accept from the oil lobby occurred in Sioux Falls, S. D. On the Sunday after Senator Case announced the effort to aid his campaign, the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls published an editorial by Editor Fred C. Christopherson, the burden of which was: "All of the information concerning it should be made public as promptly as possible...
...Nobody is going to tell, on the basis of objective research, which newspapers do a good job and which a poor job of presenting political news to their readers...
...Virginius Dabney, Richmond Times-Dispatch: "I can't see any real need for such a study...
...It is hard to tell when the story began, but a tentative starting point might be 1947...
...That was the year when Adlai E. Stevenson made his temperate, good-humored, but serious speech about the "one-party press...
...Whether so designed or not, the effect undoubtedly was to freeze attitudes before many of the editors even knew what kind of project was proposed and how it would work...
...William R. Mathews of the Arizona Star...
...Kahler's involvement, and asserting that editorial policy of the Argus-Leader is determined by the editor, not the business manager...
...It was the year when Eric Sevareid of CBS found that Stevenson news had been virtually shut out of "some big Midwest and Western dailies," and grossly underplayed in weeklies like Time and Life...
...The Post went on: "There is no theme on which publishers and editors deliver longer and more repetitive sermons than on the sanctity of press freedom...
...I can think of no better way to close than with the rounded periods of the last-named editor above, whose newspaper has lately been fined for violation of the anti-trust laws, and who somehow typifies the average newspaper better than any doubting Thomas haunted by a notion that the press might be better than it is...
...Since the proposal called for a great deal of newspaper cooperation," he said, "it was the committee's judgment that the study had no chance of reasonable success...
...One of the news stories I marveled at was the Associated Press dispatch from London which ran in one newspaper under the headline: Europe Glad Ike Is to Run How did the AP find out, I wondered, that Europe was glad...
...Isaacs applied to Hutchins for the money...
...How could so many avoid uttering even a few words on a proceeding that raised issues so vitally affecting the future integrity of U.S...
...But Hutchins was innocent...
...Dilliard, a man not easily discouraged, kept bringing up the matter at the ASNE...
Vol. 20 • May 1956 • No. 5
