Missing the Big One

The nation's second astronaut soared into orbit, landed all over the front pages of the U.S. press and, after a parade or two, almost dropped from view. In Maine, the Portland Press-Herald paid fond front-page homage to a resident who had celebrated his 100th birthday; in San Francisco, the Examiner hoisted one of its favorite banner headlines: S.F. MERCHANT SLAYS BRIDE IN LOVE NEST. In New York, the World-Telegram & Sun bannered an example of typical Communist behavior (REDS SPY ON U.S. A-TESTS), and the Post reported a typical episode in the life of a movie star (ROZ RUSSELL ROBBED OF 100G IN GEMS).

Allowing for regional tastes, few could fault such Page One coverage--as far as it went. The trouble was that it did not go far enough. Something was missing, and last week the nation's press finally discovered what that something was. Suddenly, the headlines began to howl: in the Dallas News (MARKET TUMBLES IN ITS WORST DAY SINCE '29 CRASH), in the Providence, R.I., Journal (NEW YORK STOCK MARKET COLLAPSES), in the San Francisco Chronicle (STOCKS PLUNGE).

In New York, scene of the disaster, Manhattan papers scrambled to make up for lost time. The Times crammed 14 stories and 250 column inches on the slump into a single issue. With less space to play with, the Herald Tribune still broke out in a rash of eight stories, as well as a Page One editorial blaming the decline on President Kennedy ("Unease about Mr. Kennedy's course is undeniably a major factor"). Hearst's Journal-American waved one streamer after another, in appropriate red ink. But behind all this breathless coverage lay a fact in which few U.S. papers could take pride. By a country mile, they had missed the biggest financial story of the year.

Foresight Was Rare. All during the wild skid that led to last week's "Black Monday," the U.S. press maintained what amounted to an unintentional conspiracy of silence. There were clues to be found back in the financial pages--but, even by the oddest journalistic judgment, that was hardly where the story belonged. And sometimes even the financial-page footprints were obscure. "The stock market acted yesterday like a diver going off a springboard," reported the New York Times in a heavy-handed attempt at cuteness. "It went up, down, up, and then plunged." The New York Post ran straight-faced an optimistic handout from a brokerage firm ("Chemical stocks should resist further market weakness"). In Birmingham. Ala., the News managed to get through the whole week without carrying a single line about the market.

Here and there, a paper sensed the significance of the market's movement and pushed the story briefly onto Page One. The Tulsa World kept the story on Page One three days running (STOCKS SKID TO NEW LOW ON SELLOFF). In the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, the market story surfaced twice. But such foresight was rare.

And when the bottom finally dropped out of the market, the nation's press, caught unawares, scarcely knew how to act. The San Francisco Chronicle splashed the story on Page One--but gave it second play to another ripple in the crime wave that the Chronicle helped create last month (TIME, May 25). The Atlanta Journal smugly pretended it had known all along: "This sell-off had been forecast and foreseen by the smart boys for a long time." (If so, the Journal had not been listening.) Even the Wall Street Journal, which had been onto the story all along, chose to adorn its front page, the day after the dive, with a chart showing that sales of pleasure craft were sinking.

The Trigger. Nearly every paper explored the causes of the slump--and many lined up with the New York Herald Tribune in blaming the President. "What might be called the Republican guess," said the Daily News, "is that President John F. Kennedy brought on the recent market slumps and slides with his savage, Gestapo-like attack on the steel companies. Democrats guess otherwise . . . that the market re-entry actually was caused by a widespread realization that the era of inflation in this country is over for a long time to come. Our own hunch is that Columnist Walter Lippmann taxed the President with throttling down the economy--to prevent inflation--before it had fully recovered from the 1961 recession. "As things are going," said Lippmann, "the stagnation which is overtaking the recovery will be followed by another recession." Lippmann's suggested antidote: a little inflation, in the form of "a sharp cut in the direct taxes paid by individuals and corporations."

The Wall Street Journal invoked the spirit of its founder, Charles Dow and his "trigger theory" of market slumps ("when the stock market has run its upward course it often takes a 'great event' to trigger its fall"), fingered Kennedy's joust with steel as the trigger. The Journal ventilated other grudges: "True, there were a few little [economic] problems. But the Administration was going to solve the dollar problem abroad by cutting Aunt Bessie's customs allowance. It was going to spur business by suing nearly every major company under the antitrust laws, and hold down prices by telling major industries what they could do. It was going to encourage savings by withholding taxes on savings, encourage farmers to solve the farm problem by putting them under the tightest controls ever ... It never made any sense."

By week's end, the year's biggest business story dominated the nation's front pages with commendable, if confusing, thoroughness. But to readers from coast to coast, the sudden feast after so many weeks of famine raised a perplexing question: If the news from Wall Street was all that important, why hadn't their paper told them about it before?

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