Short Takes

> Several million TV viewers watched CBS's 60 Minutes cast doubt on Lieut. Colonel Anthony Herbert's charge that the Army had stripped him of his command in Viet Nam because he reported U.S. atrocities to his superior officers (TIME, Feb. 12). But precious few newspaper readers saw any mention of the CBS investigative coup the next day. Neither the Associated Press nor United Press International carried the story--a strange omission, considering the wide coverage given to Herbert's antimilitary statements. The A.P. says that the story did not justify the space a full background explanation would have taken. The U.P.I, editors could not recall receiving advance notice of the show, although CBS staged a press screening and delivered broadcast transcripts to major New York City news outlets. The New York Times, which 60 Minutes had singled out as the paper most responsible for publicizing Herbert's side of the story, did carry a straightforward account of the program.

> When the conservative Chicago Tribune began running Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman's left-leaning iconoclasms last June, it warned readers that "his provocative and controversial style will shock and anger some." Sure enough, shock and anger quickly appeared--in Tribune editorials. "We can't sit by," the Trib huffed in July, "while he refers to Israel as 'the Prussia of the Middle East.'" The next month, the paper hopped up again to skewer Von Hoffman's critical description of Republican partying at the Miami convention: "If some [of the delegates] appeared to be affluent, well, so do some syndicated columnists." When Von Hoffman recently blamed the nationwide energy crisis on the greed of oil, gas and coal industries, the Trib retorted on the same day: "Danger: dilettante at work." So far, the paper has quarreled with the columnist (whose regular base is the Washington Post) five times. Trib Editorial Page Chief John McCutcheon reasons that Von Hoffman's views might otherwise be mistaken for the Trib's own. The columnist has no complaint. "All you can ask," he says, "is that your own squeaky voice be heard along with the other squeaky voices."

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