Debate Continued

One night last January in Manhattan's Town Hall, portly, irascible Harold LeClair Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, met Publisher Frank Ernest Gannett in radio debate on the question: "Do we have a free press?" Secretary Ickes' answer was a querulous "No."

From time to time since then, Harold Ickes has repeated his thesis, with trimmings. Last week he returned to his attack in a book (America's House of Lords, an Inquiry into the Freedom of the Press*) richly documented with I-told-you-so's. America's House of Lords develops the same thesis which its author outlined on the air last winter: there is no danger that the U. S. will impose any Government control upon newspapers, but it doesn't have to: the press is already censored by its business connections and advertisers. Publishers suppress facts which are financially dangerous, distort facts to influence public opinion against economic reform. Ickes produces facts and figures to show that publishing has become a big business in itself, with expensive plants and lucrative revenues; that publishers have grown rich; rich men have become publishers, and they are aligned with other men of wealth against the interests of common man.

Their influence is potent, says Harold Ickes, because newspapers have become a semimonopoly; over 80% of all U. S. dailies are without opposition in their communities; more than 37% of their total circulation is controlled by 63 newspaper chains; most big publishers serve as directors of other corporations, which they try to protect; lesser publishers are forced to truckle when banks threaten their investment or advertisers their revenues.

Research gathered by Author Ickes to support his contention is impressive, comes largely from such unimpeachable sources as Editor & Publisher and from newspapermen's own writings. Thereby Mr. Ickes makes himself a monkey. For Ickes quotes so many criticisms of the press by newsmen themselves that he overturns his own argument, shows that, if many publishers diligently suppress unpleasant facts, others with equal diligence uncover them. He offers no panacea to correct the abuses he recites, piously admits that "We cannot control the press without losing our essential liberties."

An engaging job of muckraking is America's House of Lords. Author Ickes sounds like what he is: a public official who has on occasion been irritated beyond endurance by things he read in the papers. Having said his piece, he concludes: "I feel better about the American press now than I did six months ago," presumably winds up his debate.

Much of the credit for Harold Ickes' book goes to able Historian Dr. Saul K. Padover, who assembled the facts, earns thanks in the preface for "research . . . wise counsel . . . help." America's House of Lords on eight occasions quotes TIME as its authority. But, said Harold Ickes of TIME lately: "I never read the Goddamned thing."

* Harcourt, Brace ($1.50).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.