Pulitzer Pains

As thunder follows lightning, so grumbling follows the annual award of the Pulitzer Prizes. This year's controversy centred around the placid, bespectacled head of Arthur Krock, chief of the New York Times Washington bureau, whose exclusive, authorized interview with President Roosevelt in February 1937--the only one given in five years--won him the $500 prize for distinguished Washington correspondence.

White House correspondents work on the understanding that the President plays no favorites, grants no exclusive interviews. Krock's colleagues, good and sore, promptly obtained from Press Secretary Stephen Early a promise that this kind of thing would never happen again. Many newshawks felt the interview appearing during the fight on the Supreme Court Bill had been planted. Last fortnight. Earl Godwin, Washington Times reporter and president of the White House Correspondents' Association, carried the controversy to Dean Carl Ackerman of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where Pulitzer possibilities are sifted: "If, as some say, this story was actually inspired or planted, that the President himself okayed it in type, is that a prize-winning achievement for Mr. Krock? ... If the President or the White House planted this story, then I should say that Mr. Roosevelt himself should share the prize."

Best-informed Washington opinion last week was: That the interview was Correspondent Krock's own idea, that it was originally intended as a background Sunday story in which the President would recapitulate his views; that Mr. Krock was closeted with the President for an hour-and-a-half in the White House oval study; that the entire interview was then submitted to the President, who suggested new insertions and approved its use as a news story--even approved the headlines. But all Mr. Krock would say was: "No comment."

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