How to Hold a Hearing

Even to U.S. citizens long inured to political stinks, the Cox Committee's investigation of the Federal Communications Commission was becoming slightly nauseous last week. When Congress set up the committee to review the functions of FCC, backbiting Gene ("Goober") Cox-then (and still) charged by FCC with accepting an illegal fee from a Georgia broadcasting station--wangled himself the chairmanship. At the first public hearing Chairman Cox promised "an impartial and wholly constructive" investigation.

Last week's public hearings in Manhattan were fair samples of Committee tactics. Cox & Co. professed to be mightily upset by FCC's recent pressure on foreign-language broadcasting stations. They charged that FCC, with power to withhold or revoke licenses, was forcing station managers to fire broadcasters, take on others favorable to FCC "politics." By control of personnel, they added, FCC was censoring broadcasts.

To all this, FCC was allowed no rebuttal, no opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, present documentary evidence that the fired broadcasters might have been pro-Axis, might have been propagandizing. The Committee sat as judge and jury, and the press took up the hue and cry.

The Wall Street Journal charged that FCC was using its licensing authority "to censor broadcasts, when the law gave it no such power. . . ." The New York World-Telegram chimed in with headlines: BROADCASTERS LIVE IN HOLY FEAR OF FCC WRATH.

Texas-tall, balding, FCC Chairman James Lawrence Fly made the obvious observation: "FCC is being tried in the newspapers." He had pretty good proof that the Committee planned it that way: a July 7 memo from the counsel to Cox Committee members outlining the most effective procedure:

1) "Decide what you want the newspapers to hit hardest and then shape each hearing so that the main point becomes the vortex of the testimony. Once that vortex is reached, adjourn.

2) Do not permit . . . extraneous fusses with would-be witnesses, which might provide news that would bury the testimony which you want featured.

3) Do not space hearings more than 24 or 48 hours apart when on a controversial subject. This gives the opposition too much opportunity to make . .. countercharges. ...

4) Don't ever be afraid to recess ... so that you keep proceedings in control so far as creating news is concerned.

5) And this is most important don't let the hearings or the evidence ever descend to the plane of a personal fight between the Committee chairman and the head of the agency being investigated. The high plane . . . should be maintained at all costs."

This shrewd advice helped get headlines, sure enough. Whether it, or the hearings, would get Gene Cox anywhere, remained to be seen. Already there were signs to the contrary. The New York Herald Tribune condemned the Commit tee's tactics and how-nowed Congress for permitting "backstairs propaganda." Lawrence Fly still had his job.

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