Propaganda v. Facts

One day last week a "high Government official"--very high and very close to the President--decided that the U.S. people had become too complacent and needed another dose of gloom. Rounding up the regulars in the White House press room, he took them to a quiet room in the Mayflower Hotel and there, over oysters and drinks, gave them a "not-for-attribution" talk about his and the President's worries.

Said he: greedy pressure groups are upsetting the anti-inflation program. They are postponing the day of victory by their grabs for higher wages and higher prices. The people are apathetic. They are not facing the war realistically. They should be told that casualties in the next three months may be three times the total to date.

The reporters obediently reported all this. Scareheads about "500,000 casualties in three months" blossomed in the press. In the White House, Secretary Steve Early's telephone began ringing furiously. OWI Director Elmer Davis and the War Department both wanted to know what the hell. Late that evening the "high Government official's" press agent got the White House reporters on the phone, begged them to tone down their stories, go easy.

Plainly the Presidential directive of last September ordering all official Government statements to be funneled through OWI was still being ignored--and with the President's knowledge & consent. But the real issue was still this: Is U.S. public opinion something to be manipulated by alternating kicks in the pants and doses of soothing syrup, or should the people be given the facts and allowed to make up their own minds?

Six Cooks, No Davis. Every newsman knows that the people are not being given all possible facts about the war which do not involve military security. Some news facts have been suppressed to protect military reputations; more have been withheld or slanted to "protect" U.S. morale. Still others have been withheld because of President Roosevelt's growing love of secrecy. The public at large ascribed press protests at the neglect and exclusion of reporters at Cairo and Teheran to self-interested bellyaching. But Elmer Davis does not work for the U.S. press; he works for the U.S. people. There was room for six Filipino cooks in the President's Cairo-Teheran party, but no room for Mr. Davis.

And if the President distrusts the press, his Christmas Eve broadcast offered no evidence that he trusts the people more. The generalities of his speech were bare-boned in contrast with the detailed reports, confided privately by the President and other Cairo-Teheran conferees, which were flooding Washington and the nation.

The official attitude is infectious. Navy censors last week denied deleting "horror scenes" from the official films of Tarawa. Newsreel producers had cut them through fear that women might get sick in theaters.

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