THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS
Villard, Oswald G.
The President And The Press By OSWALD G. VILLARD NONE of President Truman's appointments is more remarkable and significant than his selection of Charles G. Ross of the Washington staff of the St....
...Ross's modesty would make him insist that he has contributed no more to the whole than others...
...That has meant much not merely to the paper and to the profession, but to the Republic itself...
...Running True To Form Mr...
...Ross knows just what journalists ought to have, and what it is necessary to give them...
...It can be counted on when the war is over to insist upon a return to the liberalism of the early New Deal, and to work once more for the ideal of a warless world...
...Both men give out news and when they cannot, "frankly say that they cannot, and if possible tell why...
...From 1918 to 1934 he was its chief Washington correspondent...
...Louis Post-Disptach as his press secretary...
...Nonetheless he stands out so clearly as typifying the finest qualities of the Post-Dispatch and of its achievements in the past that President Truman could not possibly have overlooked the fact that in choosing his former schoolmate he identified himself with the finest kind of independent, non-partisan journalism that spares no one when it believes that there is a public service to be rendered...
...The President's willingness to borrow his press secretary from the Post-Dispatch is the more interesting because that newspaper probably did more than any other to rouse public feeling against the boss who gave Truman his start in political life and sent him to the Senate, while steadily misruling and exploiting Kansas City...
...It was its brilliant correspondent, the late Paul Y. Anderson, who followed up tips given by the late Sen...
...For he will play fair and honestly and straightforwardly with his fellow-craftsmen or—quit without a moment's hesitation if I have read his character aright...
...For 5 years thereafter he was editor of the editorial page...
...It has been one of the few newspapers in the United States which has never counted the cost of anything that it has undertaken...
...If he keeps on doing things like this and making as good appointments as on the whole he has, barring the indefensible dropping of the Kansas City district attorney who sent Boss Pendergast to prison, he will go far toward reuniting the 2 wings of the Democratic Party...
...Pulitzer on his recent return from Europe when he demanded not only the execution of a million Nazi SS men, but also the wholesale destruction of all the German industrialists and financiers—this according to reports in the New York newspapers...
...The conferences are no longer dramatic performances by one who seemed often to be trying to use the press for hi* own purposes...
...Ross was in the same class in hi;rh school with President Truman, but that alone does not account for his choice...
...That means a great deal because the Post-Dispatch is still the outstanding liberal newspaper in the United States, despite occasional lapses and errors of judgment...
...Like the calling of Herbert Hoover to Washington for consultation as to the food situation in Europe with which the ex-President has kept in the closest touch, the Ross appointment indicates that, partisan as he is, the new President takes a broad view of things and is not willing to nourish grudges...
...Bob La Follette, Sr...
...I repeat that I know no one in Washington who could fit better into this program with greater efficiency and dignity than Charles Ross...
...To this must be added the fact that, as the late Sen...
...But it is everlastingly to his credit that he has drawn to the paper an extraordinarily brilliant staff of editorial writers and reporters who have given to the P-D, as they affectionately term it, a loyalty and devotion beyond price...
...In other words, the newspaper conferences have become again what they ought to be—short, cooperative meetings with neither side trying to badger the other, but intent on the main business of getting out the facts...
...More than that, he is himself a true liberal and sympathetic with the original aims of the New Deal...
...I sincerely trust, too, that its editorial writers will not follow the mad lead given by Mr...
...Its Washington Bureau has long stood out not only for the excellence of its day-by-day reporting, but for the sensational facts that it has again and again brought out...
...Ross was one of the 2 editors...
...Whatever the Post-Dispatch may do, however, it is going to be a continuing satisfaction to think of its Charles Ross as the news source in the White House...
...He has been one of the star members of the Pulitzer paper on and off since 1906...
...Ross returned from a short assignment at the San Francisco Conference it was plain that a most desirable and most needed revolution was taking place in the White House in connection with the press...
...That achievement was but one of a long list of accomplishments of the Post-Dispatch, many of which are recorded in a 31-page pamphlet issued by the paper of which, if memory serves, Mr...
...It is inconceivable to me that he would continue in this position—to which he has been loaned for 3 years by the Post-Dispatch—were there to be any other attitude on the President's part...
...A Broad View Even before Mr...
...The President would not have taken him unless he had wished to be represented by a man who is essentially liberally minded and who typifies the highest professional and ethical standards...
...Returning to Washington then he has been a contributing editor ever since...
...Now Mr...
...The younger Joseph Pulitzer is no more afraid of advertisers than was his father...
...The business of giving out the news and keeping the people informed was always secondary so that actually the American public was never as well posted as to what was happening as was the British...
...Walsh of Montana put it in the Teapot Dome scandal, the Post-Dispatch has always backed its staff writers by its "discriminating and helpful editorial comment in contrast to the hostile attitude of the press generally until outraged public opinion forced a change...
...It is true that the staff has cared much more to work as a group than for individual distinction...
...I am sure that I am not exaggerating when I say that no man stands higher in the esteem of the corps of correspondents at the capital than does Mr...
...His political judgment has not been as sound, and his liberalism occasionally goes wrong...
...Just now it is running true to form in the splendid fight that it is making for the proposed Missouri Valley Authority to develop the Missouri River into a great source of electric power for the whole Middle West...
...It is true that Mr...
...Gone is the former atmosphere of suppression...
...I can only cite here what I wrote in my book The Disappearing Daily, that "I know of few other instances in which one journal has so clearly demonstrated the tremendous power of the press when it is sincerely and unselfishly devoted to the revealing of public wrongdoing...
...in his demand for an investigation of the leasing of naval oil tracts at Elk Hills and Teapot Dome, and it was through him and his associates that so many facts were brought out as to compel the official .Senate investigation which finally resulted in the revelation of the trail of corruption that led straight into the Cabinet room of the Harding Administration...
...Truman meets the newspaper men in a straightforward, businesslike way, and so does Mr...
...Being a lifelong working journalist Mr...
...He would surely be among the very first to resent the using of the press for partisan or personal purposes...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 24
