Senate v. Press

The U. S. Senate last week found itself pitted against the U. S. Press in a bad-blood fight.

Fortnight ago, the Senate confirmed Irvine Luther Lenroot as a Judge of the U. S. Court of Customs & Patent Appeals. No senatorial courtesy was accorded this onetime Senator. His nomination was bitterly fought because, once a Wisconsin Liberal, he had turned Conservative, had hindered the Senate's Oil Scandals investigation, had lobbied for power interests. His confirmation by the Senate was first-class news. Like all Senate votes on presidential nominations, the vote was taken in "executive session," behind closed doors, secretly.

Newsmen and Senators have a joint technique about secret sessions. When the Senate bells jingle three times, Superintendent James D. Preston of the Senate Press Gallery shooes all correspondents out of the gallery, closes its big double doors, locks them with an immense key and, for good measure, props a swivel chair against them.

When the secret session is over each correspondent hurries to find that particular Senator with whom he is on the most intimate and confidential terms. Senate rules prohibit, under penalty of expulsion, any Senator from revealing executive session happenings. It usually requires between ten minutes and a half-hour for all the essential facts of these meetings to be gathered up by the Capitol correspondents, assembled and put in full and free circulation in the Senate Press Gallery. Not all Senators will divulge what their rules forbid but enough will do so to make a fiction of the Senate secrecy.

That the Senate had confirmed Mr. Lenroot by a vote of 42 to 27 was quickly known to every member of the Press Gallery. More enterprising than his colleagues, Newsman Paul Raymond Mallon of the United Press Association set himself to learn the exact line-up of these 69 secret votes. Many a good Senate friend has this (all, quick-stepping, dark-haired news-gatherer of 28. Through him early this year the public learned the secret vote whereby the Senate confirmed Roy Owen West as a Coolidge Secretary of the Interior (TIME, Feb. 4), the publication of which in newspapers served by the United Press shocked and scandalized the Senate, gave momentum to the idea of abolishing secret sessions.

The same Senate friends helped Mr. Mallon with a few names here, a few names there, until, in two days, he had compiled a version, at least, of the Lenroot vote, which was promptly published in U. P.-served newspapers. Again a Senate secret was out. Again Pressman Mallon's nose-for-news shocked and scandalized Senators.

The big Mallon news this time was that nine Democrats had combined with 35 conservative Republicans to put Mr. Lenroot on the bench. The significance of the news, quite overshadowing the individual secret votes of Senators, was its manifestation of a growing Press policy, led by the United Press, to break down the fiction of secret Senate sessions by showing their futility.

With the Lenroot roll-call in print, angry Senators felt betrayed, behaved as if they were ashamed of their votes. First they began vengefully to pursue Pressman Mallon, then went off on a will-o'-the-wisp hunt for some Senator who could have given him this information.

Senator Elaine of Wisconsin forced the secrecy issue by offering for publication in the Congressional Record the Lenroot roll-call as compiled by Pressman Mallon. Up rose Pennsylvania's haggard, young Senator Reed to demand enforcement of the Senate's secrecy rule. Complained he bitterly: "There is some hypocrite here who prattles out loud about law enforcement and in secrecy does what he dare not do publicly and gives out information." He called for the expulsion of any Senators who had given Pressman Mallon his in formation, announced a meeting of the Rules Committee to deal with this matter, and continued:

"If any one of the newspaper reporters is called on to testify before the com mittee as to the sources of his information, then, in accordance with the so-called ethics of that so-called profession, he will decline to say where he got his information and I, for one, would enforce the proceedings against him that are appropriate for a contempt of the Senate. ... If we would show a little determination we would find out where the leak is."

Vice President Curtis ruled that the Mallon vote report could go into the Record. Senator Reed, indignant, appealed from this ruling but could muster only nine Republicans to his support, seven of whom the Mallon report had showed voting for Lenroot,

Next day the Rules Committee met, prepared to censure the undiscovered "leaky" Senator, subpoenaed Pressman Mallon. By ancient custom and courtesy, though not by rule, one representative at a time of the four great press associations--United, Associated, Universal, International--is allowed the privilege of the Senate floor. Chairman Moses of the Rules Committee, by way of punishment, ordered this privilege for the United Press suspended. Wisconsin's Senator La Follette, eager to press the issue to the maximum discomfort of Republican Conservatives, pointed out that the Senate rules granted no floor privileges to any pressmen. When Senator La Follette later saw Fraser Edwards of the Universal Service weaving industriously about the floor, he made a point of order against his presence. Vice President Curtis ruled Mr. Edwards off the floor.

Vastly vexed was the Associated Press, chief rival of the U. P. Its Washington chief protested to the Senate, claiming the right to publish executive session proceedings, implying that the United Press report of the Lenroot poll was not accurate. The only inaccuracy formally complained of had to do with two absent Senators. Nevertheless the A. P., in self defense, kept belittling its rival's scoop. This not-very-sporting A. P. letter brought mumbles of derision from Senators.

The U. P. and Hero Mallon were not without their strong defenders. While the Press Gallery seethed with indignation, on the floor Senators La Follette and Johnson took up cudgels for Mallon. Senator La Follette's chief point was that the Rules Committee should question Senators about infractions of the secrecy rules, not newsmen who have taken no oath to obey those rules.

"The place to start housecleaning," cried La Follette, "is in our own household. . . . This is a legislative chamber and not a club or a secret organization."

He recalled that one year ago Newsman Theodore Huntley had printed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette information about the executive session of the Senate which rejected the nomination of John Jacob Esch as Interstate Commerce Commissioner. Mr. Huntley is now Senator Reed's secretary.

Declared Senator La Follette, after citing other news accounts of executive sessions: "If Mr. Mallon is to be put on the rack and grilled, all newspaper men guilty of publishing executive session news should be broken on the wheel."

Retorted Senator Moses: "The equipment of the room of the Committee on Rules has in it no grill, no wheel upon which anyone may be broken, no culinary equipment which can cause torture."

Senator Couzens of Michigan inadvertently let out a Senate secret when he asked why the Rules Committee did not call Senators who had left the executive session to telephone Mr. Lenroot for promptings on how best to meet the attack against him.

Perceiving that he had blundered, Senator Reed shifted his attack from the Press to the unnamed tattling Senator. With correspondents glaring at him from the gallery, he admitted that he had "committed some offense" by his slur upon their ethics and added: "Ethically the action of the newspaper man is not comparable in its meanness with that of the Senator himself who violates the rules and then hides behind the newspaper man. . . . The person to punish is the Senator who is guilty and I hope the Senate will not get it into its mind that we are starting out to persecute any newspaper man."

This did not mollify the Press Gallery. Behind Newsman Mallon they took their stand, the while jibing him about a possible jail sentence. Born at Mattoon, Ill., a product of the Notre Dame journalism school, he had cub-reported on Louisville papers, joined the United Press in New York in 1919, been shifted to Washington in 1921. With the Senate now on his trail, he became a Public Character. He made a talkie for Pathe Newsreel, into which Pathe edited a shot of an Abraham Lincoln impersonator declaiming the Gettysburg finale.

Senator Reed, through his Secretary Huntley, sent a conciliatory message to the Press Gallery inviting correspondents to meet him for a discussion of "newspaper ethics ... to swap viewpoints." Fifty newsmen signed a retort that they would not confer with him, that they preferred to hear this "thoughts on newspaper ethics" from the Senate floor where he had referred to "the so-called ethics of a so-called profession."

Beneath the whole episode grew a sentiment in the Senate for a change in its rules to do away with secret executive sessions on nominations. Polls showed many more than a majority of Senators in favor of some escape from their present embarrassing position.