THE NEW CRUSADERS
Wechsler, James A.
THE NEW CRUSADERS by JAMES A. WECHSLER PTIhe business of journalism was re--*- cently enlivened, in a somewhat deadly way, by the echoes stirred by two speeches emerging from the ranks. One was...
...Obviously, by the time Rogers had finished reciting his dossier of the damned, the sensitive advertiser had few options left...
...Jones' sermon was ostensibly an indictment of our faltering moral standards, ranging, one gathered, from a distaste for the works of Tennessee Williams to the non-work of Americans who accept relief payments...
...At the peak of the Congressional fight, the American Medical Association was able to release a 190-page book devoted exclusively to quotations from U.S...
...One may venture the guess that Mr...
...His words so moved publisher Don Anderson of the Wisconsin State Journal that he reprinted them, and then, it is said, the reaction was so electric that Mr...
...Neither address will be ranked with Mr...
...Jones, spiritually at one with the NAM...
...On all the inequities and inhumanities of our time, and the faltering efforts of the community to deal with them, Mr...
...Why has the pattern of no discussion reached into atomic testing, disarmament, Berlin, and other issues that involve the problems of survival or extinction...
...But Vaffaire Rogers was in some ways less interesting and illuminating than the Jones' story...
...Mr...
...The wondrous fact, of course, is that the effort so frequently fails...
...There are perhaps two footnotes relevant to these observations...
...The Bolsheviks, in short, have stolen morality from us, along with our atomic secrets...
...The poor fellow was only trying to help, but his effort was clearly regarded as a dubious service by Horace Greeley's heirs, who do not happen to be Goldwater Republicans...
...most of the dignitaries of our industry (with the few well-known exceptions) are, like Mr...
...Jones has this to say: "Well, the theory that misbehavior can be cured by pulling down tenements and erecting in their places elaborate public housing is not holding water...
...Relief is gradually becoming an honorable career in America...
...He is outraged by modern painters (I believe he belongs to the Eisenhower school, but he also notes that, while "Russian art is stiffly representational, the paintings and the sculpture strive to depict beauty, of course, and Russian heroism...
...It was also unfair as well as painful for Mr...
...Jones was flooded with mail— most of it favorable...
...Rogers was talking about what he deems to be the obligation of American advertisers to concentrate their appropriations in publications truly devoted to the American business system—meaning, he suggested, the Herald Tribune and National Review...
...The other was recited by Jenkin Lloyd Jones, editor of the Tulsa Tribune...
...Anderson reprinted it in booklet form and sold more than 100,000 copies of it at ten cents each...
...And so he began quite frankly by saying that he did not propose to confine himself to the reiteration of familiar slogans...
...In pious editorial comments, they proclaimed that they sought recognition for their "product alone," and disclaimed any desire to be rewarded for their ideological virtues...
...Jones had to say...
...to favor the Washington Star over the Washington Post, and so forth...
...It is only after Mr...
...and Mr...
...Jones has covered the fields of theater, "progressive education" (always in quotes), and painting, that he comes to what seems to be the heart of the matter...
...So, more than a month after the address had been delivered, Goldwater placed it in the Congressional Record with the observation that "Mr...
...What paper wants to be so publicly labeled a dedicated servant of business by a self-proclaimed business spokesman...
...Lincoln's words at Gettysburg but both have a certain memorable aspect...
...We have sown the dragon's teeth of pseudo-scientific sentimentality, and out of the ground has sprung the legion bearing switch-blades knives and bicycle chains...
...As Mr...
...Jones has imparted neither novelty nor grace to these tired old positions...
...One might almost say that the most dismal fact is that much of the press no longer has to be bought or corrupted...
...Why has silence overtaken us...
...Rogers had every reason to feel that he was addressing friends...
...There would be no large point in arguing these matters, however, if that were all that Mr...
...Reader's Digest and David Lawrence's U.S...
...Rogers' hosts applauded him generously and that he felt when he sat down that he had rendered a large service to both the cause of business enlightenment and to the advertising department of his own newspaper...
...But, alas, a stenographic record of his remarks fell into the hands of Senator Barry Goldwater, and Gold-water could not deny posterity a chronicle of these utterances...
...Is this not a peculiarly pointed example of conspicuous waste...
...Rogers' outcry...
...But it must also be said that Rogers touched very sensitive nerves...
...There will be no extensive republication of the text here...
...Is foreign policy—the key of life in this nuclear age—beyond the bounds of debate...
...Jones becomes a big man by saying that we have to get after those weak-kneed people on relief, and watch our morals...
...Perhaps it should be noted at this point that Mr...
...Howard's World-Telegram and Sun quickly rejected the spirit of Rogers' remarks...
...They have been uttered by Republican Neanderthals on too many occasions, and Mr...
...The Rogers episode had both luJAMES A. WECHSLER, editor of the editorial page of the New York Post, is the author of five books: "Revolt on the Campus," "War Propaganda and the United States," "Labor Baron," "The Age of Suspicion," and "Challenge to the Beat...
...It is a pretty fair life, if you have neither conscience nor pride...
...Since Rogers' speech had been billed as an "off the record" production, he had no reason to fear any unpleasant repercussions...
...The Houston Chronicle and the Hearst New York Journal American published large excerpts...
...They could hardly have said less...
...To some degree, I think, Look magazine has done this...
...and that there is abundant reason to believe that—especially in the field of national magazines—the voice of the large national advertiser is not always inaudible...
...they inadvertently disclosed a good deal about the state of the American press, and the revelations were underlined by the nature of the response they evoked...
...One is that the defeat of the medicare bill was in large measure achieved by a Targe-scale propaganda campaign in which much of the press played a large and shameless role...
...He believes that sexy movie advertising is making us even more vulnerable to the Communist threat...
...In the light of this truly fabulous record, it is sad to contemplate the full context of the address...
...I began with some comments on the relationship of advertisers and newspapers, and there are authentic issues involved...
...Jones himself described it in his prefatory remarks as "a jeremiad...
...Way back in May he had been invited to address an institution called the Washington Round-Table, which meets intermittently in New York...
...Also deserving of note is an address delivered by Supreme Court Justice Douglas in California in which he discussed the absence of debate on great issues...
...newspapers upholding the AMA position and, in many cases, recklessly or ignorantly distorting the nature of the proposed legislation...
...But no advertiser ordered Jenkin Jones to deliver his lecture on the pernicious evils of the welfare state...
...The state will give a mother a bonus for her illegitimate children, and if she neglects them sufficiently she can save enough out of her Aid to Dependent Children payments to keep herself and her boy friend in wine and gin...
...In addition to his duties on the Tulsa Tribune, he has recently become a syndicated columnist...
...dicrous and sad overtones...
...I learned long ago that it requires no special valor for an editor to condemn sin, unequivocally, and to take his stand for motherhood...
...The Society of Newspaper Editors felt impelled to ask Mr...
...It brought into the open a subject whispered about too long— the use of advertising to regulate the spirit of the press...
...In any case, he did thrust this un-discussable subject into the open air (or, rather, Senator Goldwater did by unveiling the text of the speech...
...One could cite many other matters on which most of the press is silent or submissive...
...It might even be said that his lament is a peculiarly poignant recognition of the refusal of advertisers to let their principles take precedence over their pocketbook...
...Let it only be said that Mr...
...To put it another way, there is, I think, little chance that any new national liberal journalistic venture—newspaper or magazine— would not be subject to a quiet veto power in the Republican-ruled advertising offices...
...Rogers began his rendition, and by the time he rose to speak there must have been a general glow in the house...
...Yet the young men who swagger up and down the streets, boldly flaunting their gang symbols on their black jackets, are far more blessed in creature comforts, opportunities for advancement, and freedom from drudgery than ninety per cent of the children of the world...
...Laos is certainly more dangerous to all of us than the Missouri Compromise was to our ancestors...
...But Mr...
...Jones has subsequently reported in Editor and Publisher, "after that the roof sort of buckled," and by July he could report that more than 100 newspapers had published his text...
...Jones to repeat his words at its national convention in New Orleans...
...Could it be that the rest of the world's children have been given the doctrine of individual responsibility...
...Rogers to herald his own newspaper as the spiritual equivalent of the newsletter of the National Association of Manufacturers...
...Jones' enunciation of the gospel of Right-wing Republican righteousness was an historic episode, allegedly rekindling the traditions of E. W. Scripps and a few others who sincerely believed that it was a primary responsibility of the press to speak for the weak and underprivileged in society who cannot hire a mouthpiece...
...Paul Dispatch printed the whole thing...
...And when the city fathers of a harassed community like Newburgh suggests that able-bodied welfare clients might sweep the streets, the 'liberal' editorialists arise as one man and denounce them for their medieval cruelty...
...Gantry...
...Any informed journalist who maintains that such an effort does not take place is, if I may say so, lying to the public or to himself...
...Both the Herald Tribune and Mr...
...Jones deplores our "moral climate," that he believes the press has been negligent in fighting the condition of creeping decadence...
...It was almost a year ago that he first delivered his celebrated pronouncement to a meeting of the Inland Press Association...
...News and World Report had meanwhile used extensive quotations, and so had Home Life, organ of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Catholic Digest...
...Jenkin Lloyd Jones is an amiable citizen who has long been a pillar of the American Society of Newspaper Editors...
...that, indeed, he was a large figure in that American underground where business officials assemble to plot their counter-offensives against the Socialist Kennedys...
...Clearly, something is missing...
...Rogers says the trouble with the papers is that most of them are way out in left field, and should be punished by their advertisers...
...the St...
...Rogers' list of villains also included such television-radio figures as Chet Huntley, David Brink-ley, Charles Collingswood, and Jack Paar...
...Goldwater, did serve an authentic purpose for which the poor fellow deserves a certain acclaim...
...Jones is appalled by "progressive educators...
...Yet while the Missouri Compromise was thoroughly discussed in and out of Congress and up and down the nation, no debate on Laos has been held...
...It may even persuade some stockholders to ask their corporate directors whether their advertising policies are dictated by the ideological prejudices of advertising agencies or by the business welfare of the organization...
...We speak of underprivilege...
...I am sure he believes what he said...
...Was it a great moment in journalism when the editor of the Tulsa Tribune proclaimed, without fear or favor, his identification with the mean little men who ran their discredited war against the hapless inhabitants of Newburgh's lowest depths...
...This would not take the form of an official boycott...
...And, alas, what he has to say is really nothing more than what Barry Goldwater has been saying so long...
...Perhaps the ensuing discussion may be useful...
...Nothing is your fault...
...One was delivered by Donald I. Rogers, financial editor of the New York Herald Tribune...
...Who could ask for anything more...
...if Henry Luce is subversive, who is safe...
...Does it really serve the cause of the steel industry to place its advertising in publications whose editorial pages echo its words free of charge...
...But the Rogers recital, once it had been unveiled by Mr...
...The two speeches were presented under quite different circumstances and dealt with quite different matters...
...His theme was that any businessman who, by the gift of his advertising dollar, helped to perpetuate institutions so hostile to the free enterprise system as The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek was a damn fool...
...In a time of nuclear terror, of creeping censorship, of the denial of liberty to millions of Negro citizens, of undeclared war in Vietnam, and of a large variety of other human troubles, when do we get to the real issues...
...At moments it reads like a burlesque of Elmer Gantry's most fervent pillow-fights with sin...
...He concluded the American people are 'ready for hard-hitting editorials.' " And thus a crusader was born...
...It must be pointed out, however, that the dedicated self-interest of most American enterprises has so far curbed any spontaneous surge in the direction urged by Rogers...
...And that was only the beginning...
...He had a message that embodied a call to practical action...
...It could be challenged effectively only by a publication so rich in resources that it was prepared to suffer losses so long as necessary to prove its circulation virility...
...one need only compare the advertising bulk of the Sunday editions of The New York Times and Herald Tribune to grasp the plaintiveness of Mr...
...The crime rates.continue to rise along with our outlays for social services...
...It is composed of corporation executives who believe that lunch should be an occasion for enlightenment...
...It is not unreasonable to assume that a few vulgar anti-Kennedy jokes had been passed to lift further the spirits of the assemblage...
...Most of the symptoms of sin he encounters were bared long ago by Mr...
...but it was an embarrassing moment...
...It would be expressed in frowns of discouragement and sighs of disinterest and it would probably be devastating...
...The politicians will weep over you...
...Rogers brings very forcefully to the attention of businessmen across the country how they have been spending money in advertising what he calls their enemy . . . their enemy being those forces that are aligned against the free enterprise system of our country...
...What reduces our journalism to absurdity is the notion that Mr...
...If so, how can we, the people, ever free ourselves from military domination and assert our sovereign civilian prerogative over all affairs of state—over war as well as over peace...
...There will be no extensive rebuttal at this point to either the substance or spirit of these remarks...
...Presumably there was the usual round of convivial pre-luncheon cocktails before Mr...
...Rogers' oration rambled over wide ground, but mostly it was an appeal to American business to concentrate its advertising budget on such solid institutions as the newspaper for which Rogers happens to work, and Roy Howard's World-Telegram and Sun, which he judged an equally vigilant enemy of "the welfare state...
...What is extraordinary, in a pathetic way, is that his repetition of these barren McKinleyisms has been so widely saluted as a rebirth of the fighting spirit that once distinguished American journalism...
...On my desk as I write this is an editorial in the trade publication Editor and Publisher saying: "Proprietors of newspapers with timid editorial pages should examine the results Jenkin Lloyd Jones got from one hard-hitting speech that was reprinted widely...
...too many copies are already available...
Vol. 26 • September 1962 • No. 9
