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Into a highceilinged, cream-colored room in Washington's Hotel Sheraton-Carlton one night last week crowded television technicians with bulky equipment and wand mikes. Sixteen reporters, recruited at $125 a head, were ready to help TV Producer Martha Rountree launch her new NBC program, Press Conference. The object of all attention: U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., invited by Moderator Rountree (at no cash fee: he got a 20-volume, leather-bound encyclopedia instead) to be the first of a series of key figures to be interviewed. There was a gimmick: Brownell was expected to make an important public announcement to kick off the show.

He did. After a word from the sponsor (Corn Products Refining Co.--salad oil, syrup, cornstarch, etc.), the Attorney General of the U.S. grasped his lectern mike, crisply reported that the Department of Justice was about to start a civil action under the antitrust laws against General Motors, charging it with "unlawful activities which have given it a monopolistic position in the manufacture of buses."

There were plenty of questions--among them: Did the timing of the General Motors suit indicate an attempt to take the wind out of the Democratic election year charges that "this is a big-business administration?" Brownell's reply: "I don't believe that deserves an answer, because everybody knows we've been studying this problem for some months." But the big questions did not come until after the show. Brownell had not held a Washington press conference since October. Why, asked a reporter, had he saved his major news announcement for release on a commercially sponsored program? Said the Attorney General: the Government is obligated to use all communication media--press, radio, TV and others--in giving out news.

The answer satisfied few working newsmen. Snapped the pro-Administration New York Daily News: "A naive, simple-minded stunt . . . Government news is, or ought to be, public property as fast as it breaks." Chimed in the New York Times's Pundit Arthur Krock: "Never before . . . has a decision of this moment been reserved from general circulation by a high official--possibly for days--to help a commercial enterprise get publicity for its wares."

At week's end the Justice Department filed its suit in Detroit (see BUSINESS). Other performing artists on commercial television, from Perry Como to Jackie Gleason, would have to concede that there is something extra in being Attorney General of the U.S.

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