Platform Editor

When the lights went up at the Democratic National Convention one night last week after the screening of a campaign film. National Chairman Paul Mulholland Butler stepped to the rostrum and spat out a challenge. Trembling with rage, Democratic Chief Butler snapped that "one of the major networks has failed to keep its commitment to present this documentary film to the American people." By pointedly thanking NBC and ABC for showing the movie, he put the finger on CBS as the offender.

As a chorus of boos rose from the convention floor, some delegates stood, shook their fists at the CBS booth above and behind the rostrum and shouted, "Throw 'em out!" (Said one CBS reporter who was on the floor: "I thought they were going to smash our cameras".) Later, still fuming, toplofty Paul Butler charged "absolute sabotage," demanded that CBS carry the film with advance notice of its showing.

No "Mere Conduits." Butler's blast caught CBS President Frank Stanton sitting in a convention box alongside Harry Truman's, sent him rushing to his network's backstage headquarters. There Sig Mickelson, CBS vice president in charge of the coverage, was already getting up the explanation: CBS had made no commitment to show the half-hour film, actually showed the last six minutes of it after carrying four brief interviews with politicos, fill-ins by four of its commentators, and a one-minute commercial. The network, said Mickelson mildly, was simply "exercising our news judgment" in what it chose to show.

In a wire to his good personal friend Paul Butler, Stanton backed his staff. "I am shocked by your inflammatory attack," said the CBS chief. "Those who make the news cannot, in a free society, dictate to broadcasters, as part of the free press, to what extent, where, and how they shall cover the news. Television and radio ... are not mere conduits which must carry everything which the newsmaker demands."

Biting the Hand. Ever since Lawyer Butler came out of South Bend, Ind. to become Democratic chairman, he has persistently cried that the press -"the one-party press" -is unfair to Democrats. But his wail of "sabotage" against CBS was a case of biting off the hand that had been feeding him. CBS news coverage has been more than friendly to Butler's cause, and the punditing of its top commentators, Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid, has been sharply slanted toward the Democratic side. It was CBS that, out of its own pocket, set up hourlong, closed-circuit telecasts last month so that Butler and Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall could give instructions to delegates to both conventions. CBS also made a kinescope of Keynoter Frank Clement rehearsing his big speech, and Stanton himself gave the Tennessee governor pointers on TV technique.

Although Butler later tried to backtrack somewhat in his accusations, he pressed his demand for a CBS showing and again betrayed the chip he wears on his shoulder for the press at large. Petulantly, he hoped that "the infant medium of TV [will] not fall into some of the habits of the older medium of newspaper reporting." If CBS did not meet his demand, he threatened darkly, it might be inviting "legislation."

"In the light of all the circumstances," CBS firmly refused to yield. Moreover, all three networks informed Butler that, like editors of the older medium, they would go right on calling their own shots. The cub reporter of U.S. journalism had faced a challenge to its freedom, and had measured up.

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