Plain-Speaking Spokesman

The forthright plain speaking of William Allen White, gusty old editor and owner of the Emporia, Kans. Gazette, has long since made him the best-known and most respected small-town newspaperman in the U. S. Three weeks ago 70-year-old Editor White was elected president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, thus becoming a more or less official spokesman for U. S. journalism. Last week, on his way home, Bill White showed that this new honor had not changed his old habit. Addressing the students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance & Commerce, the Sage of Emporia blurted:

"The new menace to the freedom of the press, a menace in this country vastly more acute than the menace from government, may come through the pressure not of one group of advertisers, but of a wide sector of newspaper advertisers. Newspaper advertising is now placed somewhat, if not largely, through nationwide advertising agencies. ... As advisers the advertising agencies may exercise unbelievably powerful pressure upon newspapers. There is grave danger that in the coming decade . . . this capacity for organized control of newspaper opinion through the political advisers of national advertisers who in turn are paid to control public opinion may constitute a new threat to the freedom of the press. . . .

"The problem of the American newspaper today is to open its channels of cordial reception to new social ideals and to insure fair treatment for any reform or any reformer who is obviously honest, reasonably intelligent and backed by any considerable minority of the public. How can this be done? How can the newspapers become open-minded? I don't know. They might try to hire as doorkeepers in the house of the Lord on copy desks and in editorial chairs men who are free to make decisions . . . not controlled by an itch to move to the next higher desk by pleasing his High Potency who sits in the mahogany paneled room in front of the front of the front office. If owners would encourage a little chronic arthritis of the knee in the lower realms of reporting and copyreading we might come out from the clouds of suspicion that envelop our noble profession at the moment. . . ."

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