Bluenoses?

Free speech sometimes turns into sheer loudmouthing. Last week Blue Network President Mark Woods clamped down on two of his rowdiest commentators, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, told them to stop making derogatory or insulting remarks about public officials, especially members of Congress. When Blue news editors blue-penciled some of his "controversial" items, Winchell yelled: "My fangs have been removed!"

The whole thing had been touched off by Winchell himself. On a recent Sunday evening broadcast he Winchelled: "You bet I'm prejudiced against those in high office who guessed so wrong before Pearl Harbor. They're still guessing wrong. . . . What worries me most are all those damned fools who re-elected them."

President Woods thought the utterance was "bad radio," "bad taste," "undemocratic," and said so. So did many an angry voter, who wrote in saying he would vote as he damn well pleased. Woods then ordered his news editors to edit all the Blue's 15 commentators more carefully, reminded them of the long-standing industry rules concerning controversial topics on commercial programs.

Winchell told the press, whose major members stayed out of the controversy, that because of the Blue's action "the war is already lost back home." He hinted at dire backstage figures who were out to get him and, when President Woods telephoned him at his Miami Beach hotel, he sputtered: "How about using your network to say that I think the time has come when the Blue Network should be taken over by the people?" Woods kept calm and Winchell continued: "I intend to remain as free as the air, not as free as the air waves. . . . You might be pictured in years to come as a sort of Bluenose of the free air."

Later Winchell had simmered down sufficiently to admit that he had been wrong in questioning the right of voters to vote any way they want to. Woods, he said, told him to go ahead as before, but use better judgment. Said Winchell: "It was just a frank discussion between businessmen. I am not muzzled."

Behind the episode some thought they could see Congress, the military. But the Blue's President Woods said that he had had no prompting from anyone. His prompter might well have been the thought that if he did not tone down his more obstreperous commentators, someone else would do it for him.

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