How Many Angels?

In Taylorsville, Ky., a weekly editor raised a skeptical eyebrow at Drew Pearson's column in nearby Louisville's Courier-Journal last month. Pearson's Washington "Merry-Go-Round" told a "shameful, shocking story" of thousands of juvenile delinquents who were being imprisoned with hardened criminals. As a horrible example, he cited Taylorsville's own "two-cell, log jail" where, he said, "a 13-year-old runaway boy was locked up . . . for four days with a screaming, laughing maniac."

In the Spencer County Magnet, Editor Burlyn Pike straightened Columnist Pearson out. The jail, built 23 years ago, was made not of logs, but concrete; it had four cells, not two; and no runaway boy had been detained there since 1943. The embarrassed Courier-Journal asked one of its Washington correspondents, hardworking John Day, to "nail Pearson."

Day reported in the Courier-Journal that Pearson had gone off half-cocked on some loosely assembled, unchecked information. Pearson had reported that his "facts" had been "dug up" by the U.S. Children's Bureau; Day found that one of Pearson's legmen had dug them from recollections of bureau workers.

Pearson, relentless in scalping others, bellowed as loudly as any victim of his own snickersnee. To Courier-Journal Publisher Mark Ethridge he fired off a testy, 2,000-word complaint about Day's aggressive and "unreasonable" attitude. Pearson even telephoned one of Reporter Day's former employers, Publisher James M. Cox of the Dayton, Ohio News, to check up on Day, triumphantly informed the Courier-Journal that Cox thought Day an "egotistical ass." As for Day's findings, Pearson brushed off the whole thing as a "how-many-angels-can-stand-on-the-point-of-a-needle argument."

Tolerantly, the Courier-Journal printed Pearson's windy demurral as a full-page ad, free of charge. But last week the Courier-Journal also spoke its mind about Pearson's conceptions of accuracy: "The essential question which Pearson missed [is whether] the 'Merry-Go-Round,' which assaults many community and individual reputations, [is] based on sound and careful reporting . . . and [presents] its material fairly ... To take undocumented personal recollections and use them as [official] statistics is journalistic irresponsibility . . ."

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