Unpretty Picture

How far can a newspaper ethically go in opposing political candidates? Last week Editor Ruth McCormick ("Bazy") Miller of the Washington Times-Herald purred up to Capitol Hill in her yellow Lincoln sedan to talk over this question with a Senate investigating subcommittee. The Senators wondered if the Times-Herald staff hadn't gone a little far in the campaign which unhorsed Maryland's Senator Millard Tydings last fall.

The committee chiefly wanted to know about a four-page anti-Tydings tabloid which the Times-Herald had published to help Republican Candidate John Marshall Butler to victory. The tabloid ran a picture of an open-mouthed Communist Earl Browder standing close to Tydings, who was in a pose of thoughtful listening. The caption labeled the picture "composite" (i.e., two separate pictures pasted together), but at first glance it looked as if Tydings and Browder had actually posed together. The caption added that Tydings had said, "Oh, thank you, sir," after Browder's testimony in the Tydings committee's investigation into Communism-in-government charges of Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy (TIME, March 6, 1950 et ante).

Bazy Miller testified that Joe McCarthy, who was helping out in the Butler campaign, had asked her to print the tabloid, and she had turned the job over to her chief editorial writer, Frank M. Smith.

Smith, who has since left his $8,goo-a-year Times-Herald job to become Senator Butler's $10,800 assistant, said McCarthy's office had provided a lot of the story material, and Times-Herald files most of the pictures. The composite, he said stoutly, was "not a fake . . . not a fraud." It was, he added with a straight face, just a happy answer to a problem of "space limitation." Assistant Managing Editor Garvin E. Tankersley, who had ordered the composite made, acknowledged that he was trying to "show that Mr. Tydings did treat Mr. Browder with kid gloves." Asked Oklahoma's Senator Mike Monroney: "You see nothing wrong in the composite?" Said Tankersley: "I don't."

Senator Butler's campaign treasurer, Baltimore Attorney Cornelius P. Mundy, was one witness who disagreed with Tankersley. Said Mundy: the composite picture was "stupid, puerile and in bad taste."

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