Who the Hell Am I?

You are voluntarily paying hundreds of millions of dollars in support of your most vicious and most effective enemies. If I were a top executive of a company, I would quietly lay down the policy that prohibited advertising in any publication or upon any TV show which had a predominantly Leftish tinge to it.

--Financial Editor Donald I. Rogers

The speech was "off the record." but Senator Barry Goldwater got hold of a copy and liked it so much that fortnight ago he read it into the Congressional Record. "Thought-provoking," the Arizona Republican told his colleagues, and indeed it was; this was New York Herald Tribune Financial Editor Donald I. Rogers scolding businessmen for advertising in such "liberal" publications as the New York Times.

Sparse Pickings. Rogers had spelled out his private opinions for the Washington Roundtable (a group of tory executives) last May. But once his off-the-record remarks were read into the Record, they became a very public affair. Besides the Times, Rogers fingered several other publications as sworn enemies of business.

The major culprits: the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, TIME and Newsweek. On television, Rogers named NBC's Huntley and Brinkley, CBS's Charles Collingwood, ABC Commentator Howard K. Smith and even silenced Jack Paar as antagonists of free enterprise. Advertising dollars spent on such people and publications, he warned, do more harm than if business simply "paid all these millions of dollars right into the Communist Party."

And how might business set its conscience straight? "The influential conservative New York papers, the Herald Tribune and the World-Telegram and Sun get very sparse pickings indeed from the American business community which they support so effectively in their editorial policies." Rogers argued. "Is it so foolish to put your money into the hands of your friends rather than your enemies?"

False Notions. Last week editorial snipers began zeroing in on Rogers from all sides. The World-Telegram ran an editorial, "We'd Like the Ads. But . . ." that pointed out the obvious: advertising comes to the paper with readership and readership comes to the paper that does its job. Even Senator Goldwater chastened Rogers for his peculiar notions. 'T know a little more about newspaper advertising than he does because I've been buying it for years." Goldwater said. "You buy where the market is."

Nor were Rogers' Herald Trib bosses pleased with his performance. He had not been sent to the Roundtable to peddle ads; his ideas, the Trib hastened to add, were strictly his own. The Trib was particularly annoyed at being pictured as the Poor Little Match Girl of New York journalism by its own financial editor: "Last month was our biggest June yet," said Editor John Denson. In an editorial page box which complained that the Times had struck a low blow merely by printing most of Rogers' now on-the-record speech, the Trib was moved to brief apology. "We can only say that we are sorry."

So was the talkative Rogers, who by then was surely wondering whether he was still working. "Who the hell am I?" he protested. "Just a voter and not even a registered one. What do I know about it? Perhaps I didn't explain myself well. I even like Collingwood. I've dropped him some fan mail."

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