Newsmen & New Dealers

When the New Deal was young, Franklin Roosevelt used to bask in the warmth of as friendly a press as any President ever had. Gradually that honeymoon waned. Papers began to criticize various New Deal measures editorially, and the President began to take cracks at publishers. Reporters who asked pointed questions were lectured by a Roosevelt who did not smile. New Deal lieutenants like Harold Ickes (who last year wrote a book damning newsmen as America's House of Lords) attacked the press as a tool of Big Business.

Last week the New Deal, after holding ils fire all summer, once more turned its guns on the press. A preliminary barrage was laid down by Edward J. Flynn, longtime boss of New York City's Bronx, now chairman of the Democratic National Committee. One morning, at press conference in Manhattan, Boss Flynn let go with both barrels, accused the newspapers of truckling to a "dictatorship of their advertisers and stockholders."

Said he: "Your publishers . . . have editorialized a lot about dictatorship. I wish they would tell me why there should be an actual dictatorship of the policy of their papers by the financial interests. . . . Their editorials ... are not 'on the level.' They should clean their own house before they talk about other forms of dictatorship." Asked a sly reporter: "Should [the press] be controlled by the Government?" Said Democrat Flynn hastily: "No. Absolutely not."

"You Lie! . . ." As evidence of a press "dictatorship" Boss Flynn cited a column by Dorothy Thompson (declaring that the Rome-Berlin Axis hopes for a Roosevelt defeat), which the New York Herald Tribune dropped (TIME, Oct. 21).

Quick to defend its editorial freedom was the Herald Tribune. Recalling that it had printed another Thompson column the week before, endorsing Roosevelt, the Herald Tribune declared that last week's article was "misleading" by itself, had been "withheld . . . pending the full development of Miss Thompson's views." Two days later the Herald Tribune duly printed the missing column.

Not so restrained were other editors who jumped on Chairman Flynn. The Sacramento Union's Charles J. Lilley called the accusation "a deliberate falsehood." In Portland, Ore. the Oregon Journal printed a cartoon of Flynn peering under a bed for hobgoblins; the Oregonian's cried scornfully: "A fine set of knaves to be accusing the press of misuse of its freedom!" Said Thomas Radcliffe Hutton of the Binghamton Press in Mr. Flynn's home State: "... a political blob of which Jim Farley never would have been guilty." Said the forthright Seattle Times, reverting to old-fashioned style in a bold Gothic headline: "You lie, Mr. Flynn!"

General Disciplined. Dorothy Thompson was not the only columnist who lost a column last week. On registration day, as 17,000,000 might-be soldiers lined up for the draft, red-nosed, irascible General Hugh Samuel Johnson (who managed the last U. S. draft in World War I) sent out a column in which he said that Conscription Chief Dr. Clarence Addison Dykstra had turned up "on the rolls of the Dies Committee, all tangled up with the heads of Communist organizations," accused General Oliver P. Echols of overstepping his authority in rejecting Captain Elliott Roosevelt's resignation (TIME, Oct. 21).

Some papers (including the New York World-Telegram, St. Louis Post-Dispatch) dropped Johnson's column that day. Others (Chicago Herald-American, Detroit Times} printed it. Dr. Dykstra said that, as far as he knew, he had never been mentioned in a Dies Committee hearing.

Inquisitive Reporter. In Washington, Political Pundit Mark Sullivan reported a conversation that took place one day last week at a White House press conference. First apologizing for his presumption, Reporter Merwin H. Browne of the Buffalo News asked Franklin Roosevelt a question: "In your forthcoming political speeches do you intend to answer charges . . . that you are seeking to become a dictator ... if you are elected to a third term?"

Never before had a President of the United States been asked such a question. But never had a President run for a third consecutive term. Mr. Roosevelt, who ordinarily thrives on broken precedents, looked grim. The question, said he, was very interesting--it had everything in it except the kitchen stove. Who, he wondered, had thought up the question? Said Newsman Browne: "I did, Mr. President." It was, said Mr. Roosevelt, a very interesting question--very deftly worded. "Is there an answer?" asked Newsman Browne. The President only said again: it was a very interesting question, very deftly worded. Reporter Browne subsided.

Totalitarian Trend. In the Senate of the United States next day Majority Leader Alben William ("Dear Alben") Barkley rose to place a report by Columnists Joseph Alsop & Robert Kintner (concerning two brewers who were supposed to have contributed $100,000 to Leader Barkley's 1938 campaign for reelection) on the record. It was, said Senator Barkley, a "scurrilous, contemptible and indecent" article. "In my judgment [Alsop & Kintner] would rather tell a falsehood for nothing than be paid to tell the truth."

Up jumped Montana's Senator Burt Wheeler to second his leader, and to "deplore" a story spread by another team of political gossip columnists, Drew Pearson & Bob Allen, that isolationist Senator Ernest Lundeen was being trailed by FBI agents as a Nazi sympathizer when he died two months ago in a plane crash on a hillside in Virginia. (The Senate appropriated $5,000 to investigate the crash, the story.)

Newsmen who hold Senators up to public ridicule, said Burt Wheeler, should be barred from the press galleries. He added darkly: "It is necessary for the people to have confidence in ... the Senate . . . particularly in these times, when the trend is toward totalitarianism throughout the world."

Adding up the signs and portents of a New Deal drive on the press, Columnist Arthur Krock wrote in the New York Times: "New Deal critics of the press in Washington . . . dream of a nation . . .

with a press in which interpretation, analysis and criticism of administrative acts will be subdued by legal process, and whatever an official says will be published with full acceptance. . . ." Although the New Deal might have no calculated intention of regulating the press, it obviously would have liked to swat a press that didn't agree with it.

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