Press: Citadel Approached

Newspapers did not complain when the radio companies got their microphones at the ringside of important prizefights. Newspapers did not complain when football games went on the air, and political speeches, conventions, presidential addresses. But newspapers did complain when Radio began broadcasting news taken hot from news tickers or newspaper headlines. Newspapers viewed with alarm the formation of news-gathering staffs by the broadcasting companies, especially Columbia, which formed an ambitious subsidiary called Columbia News Service Inc. (TIME, Sept. 25). And last week the brewing quarrel between the Press and Radio flared up hotly when Columbia News Service made so bold as to try to invade a most sacred citadel of journalism —the press galleries of the National Senate and House of Representatives. The Capitol press gallery admission rules specify “persons whose chief attention is given to telegraphic correspondence for daily newspapers or newspaper associations. . . .” It was not Columbia’s idea to broadcast directly the voices of Congressmen in debate or dalliance. That departure in governmental publicity, tried in Chile but abandoned because it was too boring (TIME, April 3), would have to be sanctioned by act of Congress. Columbia News Service asked for gallery seats for three Columbia reporters who would take notes like any correspondents and relay the day’s doings on the legislative floors via microphone. Hotly to the ramparts leaped Editor & Publisher with an editorial entitled ”The Radio Menace.” Excerpt: “Radio broadcasting in this country is not entitled to press privileges because it is not a free institution—it is a government licensed instrument which is susceptible to dictation by any administration that wishes to use radio to serve partisan or special ends. . . . “The best it can do, in routine reporting, is to put a smattering of the news on the air, thus distracting interest from legitimate newspaper news service and creating confused, incomplete public thought and intensified ignorance on public matters. “Radio’s primary news objective is not public interest, but the profitable sale of advertising to sponsors of its alleged news service. . . . “Radio would appropriate the newspaper’s right and damage, to whatever extent it can, established investments in newspaper property. . . . “Editors and publishers who feel that Columbia’s attempt to invade the news field is an unjustified assault upon the free press and does not serve sound public policy should address their protests to Sam Bell, Chairman of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, National Press Club Building. Washington, and also call the matter to the attention of their representatives in Congress. Mr. Bell should refuse Columbia’s application.”

Digest v. Times

Good news stories in every election are the Literary Digest’s, usually accurate straw votes. The Digest customarily sends its figures to newspapers with a release date which, according to journalism’s ethics, must be strictly observed. Last week the question arose as to what penalties a breach of ethics in such a case would involve. The Literary Digest filed suit against the New York Times for publishing the final figures in its New York mayoralty poll a day before the specified date. Several things combined to make the Digest angry last week. In a magazine that goes to press six days before publication, leaks of whatever news the issue may contain are inevitable. Digest editors realize that newspaper editors could well ferret out the results of their polls and publish them long before the Digest itself. The Times was careful to show last week that it had acquired the figures from an outside source — Tammany Campaign Manager Abraham Kaplan—but any effect this might have had towards lessening the Digest’s resentment was more than offset by what Mr. Kaplan had to say about the figures, which gave Tammany’s Candidate O’Brien 60,129 votes to 207,189 for McKee, 261,517 for LaGuardia. He called the figures “cold” (outdated) and said: “No man . . . would attempt to forecast results of an election based upon the receipt of so few ballots as actually have been coming into the Literary Digest offices for the last two weeks.” The Digest’s mayoralty poll cost the magazine about $100,000. The suit against the Times — based presumably on $1 damage for every Times subscriber—was for $450,000.