Press: Fly Out of Ointment

To the journalistic fraternity of Sigma Delta Chi meeting last week in Chicago, its honorary president, Editor Marlen Edwin Pew of Editor & Publisher, spoke on “Editorial Criticism as a Constructive Influence in Public Affairs.” After deploring the censorships of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler, Editor Pew told of a recent visit to the White House by a group of U. S. newsmen. Said Editor Pew: “I heard the President say that he was dumbfounded by the almost unanimous support given to his program by the American Press. . . . He said, ‘But there is a fly in the ointment,gentlemen. Where is your criticism? You know the Government can make mistakes and this undertaking is too vast a program for any one man or set of men to be sure of. We are certain to make blunders. I rely on you newspapermen to check us. . . . There is no kindness in flattering a wrong cause. I want your criticism as well as your support. It is the best kind of backing and the only request I make is that you be prompt about it. ” With almost embarrassing promptness, Editor Pew’s speech was followed by an uproar in Washington which answered the President’s question. Regular attendants at General Johnson’s NRA press conferences have been the editors of two of Washington’s “confidential news letters” Willard Monroe Kiplinger whose Washington Letter is circulated privately to business executives, and James True, who gets out a similar bulletin called Industrial Control Reports. Last week it became known that both Kiplinger and True had been in difficulties with General Johnson. Editor Kiplinger filled a page of his Industrial Control Postscript—a supplement to his regular letter—with a discussion of the “News Situation within NRA,” revealed that General Johnson had censured his letters for being inaccurate, critical, conjectural. Editor True, whose criticism of NRA has been even more lively, made public a letter he had received from General Johnson which said: “Your last Industrial Control Report is full of misinformation and sabotage . . . statements without foundation … in one case distinctly libelous. … In view oi this fact you will not be welcomed at any more press conferences.”

In his reply, Editor True asked for instances of his inaccuracy, called barring newsmen from conferences “an effective censorship,” promised to be at General Johnson’s next conference anyway.