New Deal v. Newsmen

In Washington one day last week, a group of newsmen shuffled into an imposing fifth-floor conference room at the Department of the Interior. One by one, they read copies of a statement by querulous, plump little Secretary Harold LeClair Ickes. Their faces lengthened.

Harold Ickes had written: "Today . . . I wish to address a friendly inquiry . . . to the newspaper publishers of this nation. . . . Last Tuesday we elected a President who was supported by less than 23% of our daily press. This reveals [a] perilous situation requiring public consideration. . . . There comes a great opportunity to our publishers to meet this challenge. I commend the situation to them for calm self-examination. I invite them ... to comment.''

For the second time in a row the New Deal had beaten the majority of the press in a Presidential election. Did it now mean to crack down?

Presently a door flew open: in marched Mr. Ickes. With a vague "Good morning," he plumped himself into a chair at the table's end, folded his arms, waited for questions. While other reporters sat stiff and silent, up spoke a grey-haired little newswoman: Winifred Mallon, veteran Washington correspondent who has worked for the New York Times eleven years, proudly carries in her handbag the press card which admitted her to the War Department during World War I. Said she: since the press had already made an appeal for unity, did not Mr. Ickes want to "temper" his statement?

Said Mr. Ickes: that was "very admirable," but he doubted whether all papers were working for unity. He said there was a paper (name not given) which had taken its stand behind the President in an editorial on page 1, inside had printed a columnist's attack on the President. Miss Mallon reminded him that a columnist's opinions were his own, not the publisher's. That, said Mr. Ickes, was the bunk.

Painfully polite was Roosevelt's Ickes, but he tossed his head, glared down his nose, snorted like an old horse at sight of a bridle.

Ickes: You are implying that a newspaper, in order to be free, has to print sewage, aren't you?

Mallon: There is ... a difference of opinion as to what is sewage.

Ickes: Well, I agree with that, but there isn't that difference between olfactory nerves.

Mallon: . . . You pointed out something you think is wrong, and maybe it is, but what is there about it that isn't free? Ickes: ... I don't think a press is free that represents one economic group. . . .

Mallon: If you don't think it is free now, how would you go about making it more free?. . .

Ickes: I think a newspaper ought to represent . . . the views of its readers, because that is a newspaper's constituency. . . .

Mallon: Mr. Secretary, the constituency of a newspaper can take the power of any newspaper away by refusing to ... buy it. ...

Ickes: Well, of course they don't have to buy. . . . But does that absolve the newspaper of all responsibility? . . .

Inconclusive as this battle of words was, it proved that Election Day had brought no truce between the New Deal and the press, and it set up a line along which they might be preparing to fight it out. Said Editor Herbert Agar of the pro-Roosevelt Louisville Courier-Journal: "If I understand the Secretary correctly, I do not think he has a strong point. There is a lot to say against the press, but the fact that it is against an individual does not prove it is not free."

At the White House, day after Lieut. Ickes launched his attack, the President himself got into an argument with a reporter (Scripps-Howard's grey little Fred Perkins) who wanted to know whether he really meant what he had said at Cleveland last fortnight about retiring after Term III.* Mr. Roosevelt's Dutch temper flared. Newsman Perkins ought to go back to grade school, said he, and learn English.

Present at this exchange was Hearst's veteran Washington columnist, Paul Mallon (no kin to little Miss Winifred). He had had some trouble getting in: a secret-service man barred his way. White House Secretary Marvin Mclntyre admitted him, told him to stay behind when the conference ended. Then, said Newsman Mallon, "a White House Spokesman" told him not to come again--that "because of inaccuracies in his column" he would not be welcome.

Out went Reporter Mallon, hopping mad, to give his story to newsmen. The New York Times telephoned the White House, wanted to know what was going on. That evening another White House aide, William Hassett, assistant to Steve Early, called Newsman Mallon, called the Times. Said he: Mr. Mallon had been "misinformed." He was not barred from the White House.

* Full text: "When that term is over there will be another President..."

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