SAINT GEORGE (HUMPHREY) FREES THE PRESS

...What Wilson wanted to know was how the President squared his request for a budget of nearly 72 billion dollars with his 1952 campaign promise to bring the federal spending down to 60 billion...

...Because of the change, he and the reporters will have far more fruitful sessions at their weekly conferences and the country will be the better for it...

...Because I know who did write it," the correspondent said...

...More than one bureau chief had it put plainly to him that he and his staff were on their good behavior, that their copy would be checked closely to see how "fair" they were to the first Republican President in 20 years...

...Here is an even better example of one asked during those first two years...

...It was at the close of the 1952 campaign when a member of the family that owned the paper asked its Washington correspondent what he thought of Eisenhower's most recent speech...

...True, Humphrey has little to do with journalism...

...But we reporters still were fumbling...

...The following shows how even so competent a bureau chief as James S. Reston, of the New York Times, felt he had to hem-and-haw in an effort to get information from President Eisenhower...

...higher echelons were not too well pleased carried the message "much of what you write doesn't please the ardent Republicans...

...First, he could carry out the highest journalistic duty by presenting a hair shirt every day to the man in the White House...

...Such bills have always been introduced in the past, but have always been defeated...

...When Humphrey struck the shackles from the editorial writers, he also freed the reporters who attend the press conferences...

...Whenever editors disagreed with an Administration course, they found a whipping boy other than J)wight ' Eisenhower...

...Although editors know that the 72 billion budget is the handiwork not of Mr...

...A managing editor could get his ideas across just as well by standing alongside his copy desk and muttering about the bias of "those trained seal pundits in Washington...

...It was asked by Charles von Fremd, of the Columbia Broadcasting System: "There has been a bill introduced on Capitol Hill, sir, on the House side, suggesting or asking that the electoral college be abolished in determining Presidential elections, and, in its place, the popular vote be substituted...

...Secondly, he could win the plaudits of good citizens by attacking one Democratic President as "a traitor to his class" and the other as "a cheap little politician...

...And now, yesterday, Mr...

...Instead of short, simple interrogatories, we delivered oral essays...

...But no one, in or out of newspapers, has made a greater contribution this year to the free and honest and competent exercise of journalistic rights, duties, and privileges than has George Humphrey...

...It would be an exaggeration to say that there was a sudden shift back to the cross-examination days of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman...

...Eisenhower is capable of writing such a speech...

...Eisenhower was able to stand aloof from the strife, collecting all credit for what went right in the world and letting others take the blame for what went wrong...

...Stassen and Mr...

...But it was at least a start in that direction...

...Rather, it is an overwhelming urge to be respectable, to be accepted as "responsible" by the more solid citizens in their communities...

...Well aware of what was happening to him, the correspondent said bluntly that he was convinced Mr...

...I know he didn't," was the reply...

...When Humphrey expressed his sharp disagreement with the President's budget he shattered the self-imposed restrictions under which newspaper men had seen no evil, heard no evil, suspected no evil in the White House, at least out loud, since January, 1953...

...It has been an historical phenomenon that Mr...

...If they follow that policy into fields other than financial, newspaper people will be deeply in debt to George , Humphrey for reversing, however unwittingly, an unhealthy practice...

...Part of it was the result of a strange psychological block between the President and the reporters...

...By avocation, he is President Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury...

...It is doubtful that the helicopter question would have been asked, or mention made of the speeding, before George Humphrey spoke his piece about hair curling...

...But he laid it on the line more directly and in a more straightforward manner than any reporter had presented a question to Eisenhower in more than four years...

...It concluded with the assertion that those neighbors were afraid he wouldn't last out another four years if he sought re-election...

...But now the ghosts are gone...

...He could not display all his talents as an inquisitor because, under the Eisenhower rules, it is virtually impossible to follow up a question and thus prod the President...

...Some of the worst examples were offered by the best reporters in town...

...The excess of zeal shown by the reporters in "backgrounding" their questions before putting the interrogation to the President was a direct result of the anxiety displayed by their superiors that Washington correspondents be "fair" to Mr...

...The immediate result of the question was to get from the President his assertion that so long as "the American people demand, and, in my opinion deserve" the various services they have been getting from government, budgets are going to stay big...

...But there still was that air of deference, that attitude of abject apology by correspondents for asking something that might be embarrassing...

...But they have not sought for a substitute to endure punishment for advocating a continuation of New Deal spending policies...

...And he wouldn't have had any doubt that Truman knew what the question was about...

...But the election of 1952 changed all that...

...Instead, they have returned to the sound principle that a President must assume the responsibility for what his subordinates do in the name of this Administration...

...It was the kind of stuff they had begun to think about again as Eisenhower appeared to listen more and more to Republicans who wear the tag "modem...

...It is better because it makes 100 words do the work of eight and because it assumes Eisenhower knew nothing of the electoral college, and, if he had ever heard of it, did not know it was used to determine the result in Presidential elections...

...He is Richard L. Wilson, of the Cowles newspapers in Des Moines and Minneapolis, plus Look magazine...

...But the important press conference change came two months before the helicopter question...

...We were led on this return march by a reporter who, in the New Deal and Fair Deal days, had been one of our most talented inquisitors but had lost his zest for in-fighting for a time after Mr...

...and Mr...

...When he finally consented to hold such conferences, there was a feeling on the part of reporters that the President was touchy and irritable, with a low boiling point...

...About three months ago, Mr...

...Stassen seems to have announced in New Delhi that you are sending a new program to the Hill next month...

...His abilities as a cross-examiner are often on display on television news panels in Washington...

...Eisenhower...

...The timidities of die reporters who attended the conferences, added to other factors having to do with 'the President's personality, turned it into something far removed from the rough-and-tumble question-and-answer affairs under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman...

...But the end result is even more important so far as it affects the relationships between press and President...

...It suddenly became the duty of the press to be not skeptical or inquiring toward Presidents, but respectful...

...So eager were the President and his lieutenants to prove that neither the heart attack nor the ileitis operation had impaired his capacity to serve a second term that Eisenhower extended himself to make his sessions with reporters worth while from their viewpoint...

...I am not one of those who takes stock in that bogey-man, the "one-party press...

...How do you know he didn't...

...Saint George (Humphrey) Frees the Press by ROBERT L. RIGGS IF THERE is any gratitude in the newspaper business, the lion's share of journalistic awards for 1957 will go to George Magoffin Humphrey...

...Although that was an unusually gooey example of the pre-Humphrey questioning, we certainly did nothing during the first two years of the Eisenhower Administration to deserve the adjectives with which we love so well to be described—"hard-bitten," "shrewd," "incisive," "penetrating...

...The besetting sin of the people who operate newspapers is not partisanship, not venality, not antagonism to the conflicts which comprise the democratic process...

...However, if a man of George Humphrey's financial standing and intimate association with the President could take a swing at the Eisenhower budget, so could John S. Knight's newspapers and those of the Scripps-Howard chain...

...By one phrase, he made it respectable once more for newspaper people to treat the President of the United States the way it long has been their proud boast that they treat all men in public office—with skepticism...

...We recited that such-and-such a condition exists in the world, sir, and, sir, if you will forgive the rudeness, sir, I wonder if you would feel like commenting...

...the management man asked...

...An editor could perform two functions while scourging the two Democratic Presidents...

...They disappeared at the first press conference of the second term, this past January 23...

...A kindred feeling was that on many matters on which the reporters wanted the President's views, he would be scantily informed...

...Before two years had passed, the President had become adept at his part of the press conference, answering or evading as he preferred...

...Management considered that answer a moment, then made this test: "Do you think Mr...

...The question was: "Sir, I wonder" if you could straighten us out on your economic policy for Asia...

...On even so vital a matter as foreign relations, they were content to spare the President and let John Foster Dulles bare his willing should- i ers to their lashes...

...Three weeks before the San Francisco convention in August, 1956, he had asked an unusually syrupy one...

...For the Treasury Secretary has freed reporters, editors, and owners from four years of servility...

...If Reston had been interrogating Harry Truman on the same situation, he would have said with his usual forthrightness, "Sir, are you going to side with Stassen or Humphrey on the question of spending money in Asia...

...Dulles sought out the press to develop the thesis that our policy was out of balance, that we had to have a large new economic policy for Asia...

...His words were: "If we don't begin to take less out of this economy, I predict we will have a depression that will make your hair curl...

...Telegrams instructing Washington bureaus to be "as unpartial as it is possible for you to be" became routine prods...

...management asked somewhat sternly...

...That feeling brought on lengthy background utterances as reporters sought to provide the necessary information before putting a question...

...The correspondent replied he thought it was one of the best made during the campaign...

...As it turned out, Eisenhower's reply showed that he had a good grasp of the controversy between his anti-spending Secretary of the Treasury and his free-spending Foreign Operations Administrator...

...More attention was paid later to the President's anger toward a reporter who asked him why he didn't give up helicopters to take him to the golf course...

...In the Truman days, it was a morning's entertainment to see him ply his trade in the White House conferences...

...It was refreshing to see Wilson return to something like his old form on 'that seventh day After Humphrey...

...For nearly two decades it was respectable to belabor Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman...

...Eisenhower but of his White House staff, they have not sought out those individuals to make them suffer the penalties...

...It was no desire to benefit one political party which prompted the newspapers to treat President Eisenhower with glassy-eyed obsequiousness...

...Managing editors who, under President Truman, had praised their correspondents for revealing the "cynical machinations" of politicians began to fume about the inability of their Washington bureaus to be objective toward the Eisenhower Administration...

...More headlines were made by the unusually frank treatment given the President's speeding between Washington and Gettysburg...

...However, the people who are for the popular vote point out that the electoral college in their minds is now outdated, and think in some cases a man with the minority of the popular vote could actually be elected President under the electoral college...

...They were exorcised by Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey on January 15...

...Editors and publishers suddenly were seized with a new and unaccustomed fear that the Washington press corps, presumed to be filled with New Dealers, could not be "fair" to the President...

...In President Eisenhower's third year, there was, of course, the interruption caused by the heart attack...

...Notes from subordinate editors warning bureaus that the ROBERT L. RIGGS is the Washington correspondent for the Louisville Courier-Journal...

...My favorite incident concerns the chief of a Washington bureau who unwittingly disclosed a subversive streak by expressing doubt about Eisenhower's ability to write a speech...

...It wasn't long before the Knight newspaper chain's William McGaffin could feel free to ask: "Would you be willing to do without that pair of helicopters that have been proposed for getting you out to the golf course a little faster than you can make it in a car...

...You can understand how far McGaffin had traveled, post-Humphrey, if you check back on the type of questions he had been asking previously...

...This attitude on the part of the home offices made the White House press conference a farce for the first two years under Eisenhower...

...Do you think he wrote it...

...Now, this is the stuff most newspapers preached all during the dark days of Roosevelt and Truman...

...This fear was not kept secret from the hired help in the capital...

...Oddly enough, it was during the fourth year that the Eisenhower press conference began to acquire some value...

...What the Secretary said on that date is almost as much a milestone in journalistic history as any that industry solemnly celebrates...

...That new attitude by reporters was displayed two days after Eisenhower cook the oath for his second term and only seven days after Secretary Humphrey talked of a curling hair depression...

...It was evident that most reporters, when they rose to address the President, were conscious of a superior officer standing by them, in spirit, warning, "Don't be impertinent to this fine man who has saved the country from Truman, war, and the New Dealers...

...Eisenhower couldn't possibly compose so good a speech...

...Humphrey seemed to knock that down...

...It wasn't necessary to send a string of memos to the capital...

...Part of the correspondents' trouble was the consciousness that editors were looking anxiously over their shoulders...

...As a consequence, it seems likely that before Eisenhower has completed the first year of his second term, the relations between President and press will be far more normal, far more realistic than they were during his first term...

...It is noteworthy that, in the face of the reporter's obvious assumption that Mr...

...He would twist and dig and prod and probe interminably until, in sheer exasperation, Harry Truman would blurt out a reply that would make good copy for Page One...

...Eisenhower took office...

...Hence, there must be no short, direct, blunt questions...

...But no newspaper, aside from a few incorrigibles like the Chicago Tribune, had felt free to chide the President...

...It was a near thing, and the correspondent to this day is convinced he would have lost his job had not his interrogator soon thereafter become too ill to worry about such matters...

...Under these pressures, we got worse and worse at our job as question askers and the President, once he found out that a Chief Executive is always in control of his own press conference, got better and better...

...There was at the beginning a definite feeling that Eisenhower did not like the mass press conference, as conducted by President Roosevelt and Truman, and would like to discontinue it...

...He had arrived at the conclusion that, archaic 'though it be, the system provided in the Constitution had worked satisfactorily for quite some time...

...That led to an immense amount of circumlocution...

...It is doubtful if the change were evident the day it occurred...

...Was it the journalists of the nation, taking a good long look at themselves and deciding to act differently for the next four years, who got rid of those ghosts...

...Eisenhower needed a long fill-in, the President's reply showed he not only comprehended the workings of the electoral college, but also had given considerable thought to the question of continuing it or abolishing it...

...Eisenhower, that they not set trapj for him, that they not attempt to make him betray a lack of knowledge about a government problem...

...Even more important, reporters, editors, and publishers are, for the first time since the 1953 inaugural, showing signs of holding the President responsible for the actions of his Administration...

...By vocation he is a big business man from Cleveland...

...It began with a preamble about how the reporter had checked around among the Eisenhower neighbors at Gettysburg and found out "they all love you, as you know...

...Could you give us your views on 'this matter, sir...

...Our favorite introductory phrase was, "Sir, I am somewhat confused about...

...Not at all...

...Now that Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey has demonstrated that even he can disagree with the President the newspaper brass has gotten over its terror lest its employes be "nasty to Mr...