Sweep News

A polite announcement issued from the Post Office Department last summer after public excitement over lottery winnings in the Epsom Derby sweepstakes died away.

The announcement drew attention to the fact that publication of lottery information--of final awards as well as advance publicity--made a newspaper non-mailable by Federal statute ; that violation incurred a penalty of $1,000 fine or two years imprisonment. Having reminded the Press of the law, the Post Office said confidently, "It is not believed that hereafter newspapers will desire to publish the matter the statute forbids . . ." (TIME, June 29).

The Post Office Department declared it had decided to invoke the old law after receiving hundreds of complaints from individuals about fake lotteries. The press associations--A. P., U. P. and International News Service--were not sorry. The ruling would save them the mounting cost and labor of cabling long lists of names & addresses.

None of the services reported the sweepstakes on last week's Manchester November Handicap. But the New York Daily News was not afraid. Fortnight ago it got by special cable, and printed, a list of New Yorkers whose tickets were drawn. No other Manhattan daily did. Last week the News proudly reprinted from the Times's editorial page a letter from a reader, protesting that he was "forced to look to a tabloid" for the sweepstakes news. Said he: ". . . I know that you have done this by agreement with the Post Office authorities, but let me tell you that Joseph Pulitzer wouldn't have been muzzled in such a fashion." He and many another newsreader argued that the sweepstakes is legal in Ireland and therefore legitimate foreign news in the U. S.

Two days later the Times and Herald-Tribune, as well as the News, reported the news that one Harry M. Kernan, housepainter of East Orange, N. J., had won $53,250 on his $2.50 lottery ticket on Signifier, who finished second in the Manchester race (see p. 42 ). Both newspapers carried the lottery story in complete detail, with no apparent concern over what the Post Office might do about it.

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