The Press: The Fine Print

The byline of the New York Herald Tribune’s Marguerite Higgins, which has decorated Pulitzer Prizewinning stories from Korea and weighty dispatches from world capitals, popped up last August in Reader’s Digest and other magazines. Under the headline ONE BILLION UNFILLED CAVITIES MUST BE WRONG! ran a pseudo-news story by “Noted Journalist” Higgins, plugging Crest toothpaste. Washington-based Maggie Higgins, 37 (married to Major General William E. Hall), took her $500 fee and thought nothing more of it until she got a letter from the Standing Committee of Congressional Press Gallery Correspondents, questioning whether she had violated its rule against “paid publicity or promotion work.”*

Replied Maggie, opening her blue eyes wide: “It would appear that the rules are not consistent with the ad that I endorse, and therefore I regretfully withdraw (or forfeit?) or do whatever is necessary to relinquish press gallery membership. Sorry I didn’t know about your rules. Shows you should always read the fine print, doesn’t it?” Then, jabbing a hatpin at colleagues who appear frequently on TV’s press-panel shows, Maggie noted that she must have broken the rules much earlier with her first appearance on such “sponsored television shows” as Martha Rountree’s Press Conference.

But even if it was lost on Maggie, the standing committee could see the difference between a reporter who plies his trade before a television camera, sponsored or not (e.g., Meet the Press, Reporter’s Roundup, Face the Nation), and a reporter who sells her byline over a commercial spiel printed in the guise of news. Last week the committee unanimously accepted Newshen Higgins’ “withdrawal.” Maggie said she was undisturbed at the loss of her congressional press credentials. Said she: “I depend upon personal contact.”

* Another Higgins commercial enterprise that falls well within the rules: she owns a “substantial share” of a new Howard Johnson restaurant (segregated) in Cherrydale, Va., just outside Washington.