The Press: A Korean Tale

During the 18 months he was chief censor and public information officer for the Eighth Army in Korea, Lieut. Colonel Melvin Voorhees, 50, had more than a military interest in the coverage of the war. A veteran newsman himself (during World War II left as editor of the now defunct Tacoma Times), Reservist Voorhees kept a file on how the correspondents were covering the war. He shipped his notes home to his wife, who passed them on to a publisher. This week, for his extracurricular writing, Voorhees 1) had a brand-new book, Korean Tales (Simon & Schuster; $3), and 2) faced a charge that may bring court-martial. The charge: 1) breaking the rule that all writing by soldiers on active duty must be cleared by the Army, 2) disobeying a superior who had specifically ordered him to clear the book.

Paychecks & Pessimists. The Army refused to clear Voorhees’ book largely because it objected to a chapter called “The Press,” in which he accused newsmen of everything from sending dispatches that “mislead thoroughly” to doing a “disservice to the fighting Army.” Voorhees charged that most correspondents were “extreme” pessimists who sowed “doubt and fear among Americans as to the skill and honesty of Army leaders.” They seemed, he says, “indifferent to the consequences of their dispatches. They appeared to pretend they operated in a vacuum, above criticism, shorn of responsibility, answerable to no one or nothing save the signers of their paychecks.” Some correspondents broke, or evaded, censorship, says Voorhees, and deliberately misinterpreted communiques.

Good & Bad. To support his charges, Voorhees is short on the documentation which old Newsman Voorhees should have known enough to supply. Furthermore, he glosses over the fact that many of the censorship violations and other troubles with correspondents were due to snafus . among the Army censors themselves. But Voorhees does pay his respects to many reporters who in his judgment did a good job. Topping his list is the Herald Tribune’s Homer Bigart. Among several dozen others who rate high marks on his list: the Associated Press’s Leif Erickson, Reuters’ Ronald Bachelor, I.N.S. Correspondent Frank Conniff (the best for “atmospheric prose”), the New York Times’s Dick Johnson. The Trib’s Marguerite Higgins often filed good stories, says Voorhees, but “she and the other [women] distinctly were out of place in a battle zone conditioned to the convenience … of the male,” e.g., open-air latrines and communal sleeping.

When Voorhees came back to the U.S. last year on rotation, he went to the Army to discuss clearance. Voorhees says a long list of changes was den^anded not only in references to the press but to the generals. He was too critical of MacArthur, and the book had slighting references to other Army officers. Voorhees made some changes, but not all that were demanded, arguing that the censoring of his book was based on “personal prejudice.” The Army replied that the book was bound to create ill feeling between the press and Army and make it harder for officers to work with correspondents in the future. This week, his book ready to go into the stalls, Writer Voorhees prepared to face charges that may lead to a court-martial.