Headliner

_ Most TV shows are reported in the inside pages of U.S. newspapers, if they are reported at all. But not Meet the Press (Sun. 4 p.m., NBC-TV). Its interview this week with Senator J. William Fulbright, airing charges of "illegal influence" exerted on the RFC, made the front page of the New York Times. Three weeks out of four last month, the show captured equal news prominence. The London Times has called Meet the Press "one of the most reliable breeding-grounds of weekend news."

Begun five years ago on radio, the TV version of Meet the Press, which started in 1947, has been designed by Co-Producers Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak as an on-the-news soapbox where national and international figures like to spring surprises. The secret, says 34-year-old Martha Rountree, is timing. "If you have Joe McCarthy on your program in an ordinary, run-of-the-mill week, people say, 'So what?' But if you get him the night after he makes a sensational speech, everybody's spellbound."

Often First. The show's guests are not only newsworthy, but increasingly newsmaking. On Meet the Press, Whittaker Chambers touched off the series of events that led to the conviction of Alger Hiss, and Elizabeth Bentley publicly accused William Remington of being a Communist. Governor Dewey used Meet the Press for his first public statement of support of Eisenhower for President, and New Mexico's Senator Clinton Anderson seized his opportunity there to nominate Truman for a third term in 1952. General Bedell Smith, in 1949, said he was certain the Russians had the atom bomb, and Federal Civil Defense Administrator Millard Caldwell sobered viewers with an estimate of 500,000 casualties in the event of an atom attack on the U.S. Senator Taft used Meet the Press to add fuel to the Big Debate on arming Europe, and to urge that U.S. troops come home from Korea.

Never Loaded. Its bombshell quality has made the show a "must" in Washington; reporters cover it for the news and the President reportedly listens in. Ordinary viewers are apt to be more interested in the bearbaiting aspects of the show. Terrier-like Producer Spivak, onetime (1944-1950) editor & publisher of the American Mercury and the only permanent member of the reporters' panel, often gets a tenacious grip on an evasive guest and shakes damaging admissions from him. Other members of the shifting, four-man panel come from the top drawer of the U.S. press, and many a bigwig has winced under the volley of questions from such reporters as the New York Times's "Scotty" Reston, Raymond Brandt of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, U.P.'s Merriman Smith, and Columnists Marquis Childs and Drew Pearson.

When the issues are large, tempers are often short. Ex-Ambassador to China Pat Hurley verbally flayed two newsmen on the show. After Elliott Roosevelt's appearance, one of his friends punched Radio Commentator Fulton Lewis Jr. In the same melee, Moderator Rountree got a sprained thumb.

But Meet the Press, sponsored by Revere Copper and Brass, tries to maintain a fairly even balance of opinion on its reporters' panel. "We never load the panel against the man being interviewed," explains Martha Rountree, "because people are always for the underdog. Why, with a loaded panel I could take the worst man in the country and make him a martyr."

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