Classic Conflict: The President & the Press

In many respects, the dialogue sounded like an old morality play, and in many respects it was just that. Front and center stood John F. Kennedy, surrounded by a hostile chorus whose outcry ranged from rage through bluster, hysteria and lament. The chorus was the U.S. press. Like all his predecessors, the country's 35th President seemed to be infringing on the press's most treasured possession, freedom. And with the spirit of long experience, the press sounded the traditional discords of protest.

As with most morality plays, this classic conflict between President and press was part illusion, an effect heightened by the black-and-white technique of the editorial cartoonists, who made the issue seem starker than it really was (see cuts). Some of the other protests had a ritual ring. "We have in the past few weeks,'' said U.S. Representative John E. Moss, chairman of the special House subcommittee on Government information, "experienced a degree of Government news management which is unique in peacetime, a disturbing period of unplanned and unprecedented news management." Moss's charge was not without repeated precedent: he has taxed previous Administrations with much the same sin.

Moreover, the loudest hollering came from those who were the least hurt--from some Washington correspondents whose initiative has gone to sleep under a blanket of Government handouts. Recently, when Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger distributed a particularly bulky release, he was asked to identify the key passages, so that these press inquirers would not have to waste their own time searching for the lead of their story. In any list of appointments, White House correspondents no longer have to hunt for the significant names: Salinger has gotten the word--he conveniently separates the wheat from the chaff.

Calculated Leak. One reason for the perfunctory quality of some of the press criticism is that, during two years in office, Kennedy has committed no serious offenses against press freedom. Even when he buttoned official Washington up tight during the Cuban crisis, the news still flowed. Said Press Secretary Salinger last week, defending the Administration's information policy during the crisis period: "I have not had a regular correspondent cite me a single example of where they felt they were denied legitimate information."

But if Kennedy is guilty of no gross censorship, he is at least chargeable, in the opinion of his critics, with an array of annoying misdemeanors. He has betrayed a chronic tendency to regard the press as a personal tool of high utility. He has refined the use of the calculated leak, a common Capitol device. Among the White House press corps, his favorites may fluctuate, but its top echelons generally include newsmen who are also close Kennedy friends. And the President has become a past master at choosing the right reporter to loft trial balloons.

At his command, all federal communications channels have been reduced to tributaries whose source is the White House. This centralization began early and drew the first critical fire. When, in January 1961, Kennedy edited a speech by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and directed all other military brass to submit to the same treatment, the press emitted loud cries of censorship. But though the Kennedy edict certainly frustrated loose talk from the Pentagon, its effect has not been altogether negative. The din of senselessness and longstanding interservice quarrels no longer reaches the public ear.

Wartime Severity. Kennedy's inclination to manipulate the news might have ruffled few feathers but for one major tactical error. In some measure, all U.S. Presidents have managed the news flow from Washington. The Kennedy Administration's mistake, compounded many times, was to talk out loud about it.

In April last year, after the invasion of Cuba met disaster in the Bay of Pigs, the President used the occasion to propose a voluntary press censorship in the interests of national security (TIME, May 5, 1961). His appeal was not only unnecessary but ill-timed and illadvised. The U.S. press retorted that it was always concerned with the national interest, and coldly rejected his proposal.

During this year's Cuba crisis, the White House invoked news-control measures that approached wartime severity. At the departments of Defense and State, no one was allowed to speak to newsmen without a monitor present or unless the gist of the interview was later reported to a public information officer. Reporters were barred from accompanying the quarantine fleet to the Caribbean. The news, filtered through the White House, often came late. By the time Kennedy announced two inspections of Cuba-bound Soviet ships, there had been 50.

But the rules themselves were not nearly so intolerable to the press as the White House insistence on revealing its controlling hand. The monitoring regulation--a system tried and abandoned by Eisenhower--could have been applied without official comment, but both State and Defense issued formal announcements. To make matters worse, Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, advertised the fact that the press had been pressed into Government service. "In the kind of world we live in," said he, "the generation of news by actions taken by the Government is one weapon in a strained situation. The results, in my opinion, justify the methods we used." Last week Sylvester took the trouble to repeat himself. He knew why restrictions were necessary, he said. When he was a reporter for the Newark Evening News, some of the officials who answered some of the questions he asked "were jerks for doing so." He reiterated his dedication to the proposition that the Government has a right "to lie to save itself."

On Guard. All this was like rubbing salt in a wound, and the press responded by raising a mighty ruckus. Mark Watson, military reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was reminded of "the policy and performance of Adolf Hitler's propaganda chief, Joseph Paul Goebbels." Wrote Joe Alsop in a column careless of any strain it might put on his friendship with the President: "The caves of the policymakers still too strongly resemble mushroom cellars. The danger is airlessness, in other words, and this airlessness can be too easily fatal, unless the caves are regularly ventilated by the winds of national doubt."

Small chance the press would ever let the winds stop blowing. The easing of the Cuban crisis, and the relaxation of some controls, had perhaps removed the danger of any serious impairment of press freedom. But by flaunting its taste for news manipulation, the White House had put the press on guard. As if in proof, U.S. dailies helped build a national cause celebre out of a magazine article (see cover story) in which they thought they detected presidential footprints.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.