Covering a Landslide

To a majority of U.S. newspaper editors, Eisenhower's victory came as no surprise; in an A.P. poll before the election, U.S. editors predicted that Ike would win by a comfortable margin. It did come as a surprise to many of the campaign correspondents and the pundits, whose own personal attraction to Adlai Stevenson seemed to have fooled them into believing the voters thought that way too. Day after election, reporters and editors settled down to do a competent job of reporting and interpreting the results.

Not so the European press, to whose faithful readers the vote was a tremendous surprise. "Europe's reaction," wrote New York Times Columnist Anne O'Hare McCormick, "was colored by reports [which] created the impression that . . . Stevenson was not only a probable winner but the best if not the only hope of saving American foreign policy from 'neo-isolationism.' This line of comment, echoed in France, Italy and other allied countries, is the end result of slanted reports and unwarranted assumptions."

Eleventh Hour. Even though European papers gave the campaign more space than ever, much of the reporting, with the notable exception of the London Telegraph, was slanted by newsmen blinded by their affection for Stevenson and their misunderstanding of America. One of the first to go overboard was Manchester Guardian Correspondent Alistair Cooke, who two months ago predicted a Stevenson victory. But in an eleventh-hour conversion, Cooke took another look at Stevenson's "reach for greatness," as compared to Ike's "much more 'normal' campaign," and wrote: "It now appears most likely that the people will pass up the governor's invitation to 'greatness' and settle for [an Eisenhower] housecleaning."

At one point in the campaign, a London Times reporter in the U.S. was filing such obviously slanted pro-Stevenson copy that the paper's editors sent "corrective guidance" to its correspondent. Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Standard printed a dispatch from Laborite M.P. Woodrow Wyatt, headlined I TIP STEVENSON TO WIN, which said that "hysteria about Communism is making a dent in America's claim to call herself a democracy." On election eve, the London Daily Graphic's Frank Oliver cabled his paper: "I believe Governor Stevenson will win."

Even the New York Times's veteran London Bureau Chief Raymond Daniell was caught in the British current. He wrote a series of articles for the Laborite Daily Herald so rosy on Stevenson's prospects that the paper headlined: ADLAI HAS BEST CHANCE. In France and Italy, the papers made the same mistake, i.e., confusing their own sentiments with those of the U.S. voter.

Bitter-Enders. Once the election was over, most of the foreign press hailed the verdict. Notable exceptions: such bitterenders as the Bevanite Tribune and the anti-American New Statesman and Nation, and the Communist papers. Said the Tribune: "Eisenhower's sweeping victory in American election marks a tragic setback to the cause of human decency and political sanity all over the world. Wall Street will rejoice at the murder of American 'socialism.' "

In covering the election, most British and continental papers once more proved that they do a poor job of telling their readers about America. The trouble seems to be that, before they can do a good job of telling, the teachers themselves must learn more about their subject.

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