Suppression of News

Pompous Frank Gannett of Rochester, N. Y. publishes a string of dull and respectable newspapers. New Dealer Harold L. Ickes throws the most accomplished tantrums in Washington. Famed Biologist Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins, who likes to drink good beer and play the French horn, makes his views more articulate than most scientists. Last week these three had their say on the question "Do We Have A Free Press?"

Gannett (debating with Ickes on the Town Meeting of the Air program): "My answer is emphatically yes. . . . With what courage and valor editors have fought! Their plants have been bombed and burned; they have been punished and shot. ... In Europe men who criticized the government had . . . their tongues slit, ears cut off. . . . There has been no suppression of Mr. Ickes. . . ."

Ickes (on the air): "Freedom is impossible. . . . Did he [Mr. Gannett] tell his readers that he was in hock [to International Paper Co., which once owned stock in Gannett papers in Albany and Ithaca]? ... At Johns Hopkins there has been a very sensational finding resulting from study of the effect of cigaret smoking that has not appeared, so far as I know, in any newspaper in the United States. . . ."

Professor Pearl (from Baltimore the next day): "My publication ... of life tables of smokers . . . showed that smoking was harmful. ... So far from not having been given publicity, the matter has been printed in every cross-roads newspaper in the country and the clippings have been delivered to me by the pailful "*

Quick to capitalize on all this free publicity was Publisher Julian Messner, who advertised in the New York Times: "For the full, free-spoken, eye-opening account of how the press is failing the public, read the book Secretary Ickes urges every citizen to read, LORDS OF THE PRESS, by George Seldes." The Seldes book was issued last November, has been studied in Washington with much the same interest as Ferdinand Lundberg's sensational America's 60 Families.

Like the Lundberg book, the Seldes book rambles, relies heavily on innuendo. It contains a large store of previously published facts, many a windy, publisher-baiting tirade. Mr. Ickes found considerable ammunition in it. Author Seldes, said Biologist Pearl last week, wrote him several times to find out about the "suppression" of his tobacco study, was told there was no suppression--yet indicated in Lords of the Press that the story had been suppressed.

* The Pearl findings were reported at length by Associated Press last winter: in TIME, March 7, under Medicine.

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