What Is Managed News, Dad?

The moving presidential finger swung to the left and pointed at May Craig of the Portland. Me.. Press Herald.

"Mr. President,'' she asked with down-East directness, "the practice of managed news is attributed to your Administration . . . Would you give us your definition and tell us why you find it necessary to practice it?"

That faint, cold smile appeared on the President's face, but he remained unruffled. "You are charging us with something, Mrs. Craig, and then you are asking me to define what it is you are charging me with. Let me just say we have had very limited success in managing the news, if that is what we have been trying to do. Perhaps you would tell us what it is that you object to in our treatment of the news."

May: Are you asking me, sir?

President: Yes.

May: Well, I don't believe in managed news at all. I thought we ought to get everything we want. [Scattered snickers.]

President: Well, I think that you should too, Mrs. Craig. I am for that. [Loud laughter.]

Ploys & Gambits. The laughter died away, but not the topic. "Managed news" is hot stuff in Washington these days, but like the President and Mrs. Craig, no one quite knows what it is--and to what degree it is good or bad.

In the current FORTUNE, veteran New York Times Washington Columnist Arthur Krock, 76, undertakes a go at the subject and levels some serious charges. "A news management policy not only exists," he writes, "but, in the form of direct and deliberate action, has been enforced more cynically and boldly than by any previous Administration in a period when the U.S. was not in a war."

Several weapons are available to any President--suppression, concealment, distortion, false weighing of facts--and Krock says that Kennedy has employed them all. But it is in the field of indirect management of news that the President has moved "with subtlety and imagination for which there is no historic parallel known to me." A favorite ploy is to claim unpopular decisions are "in line with or compelled by policies adopted by the Eisenhower Administration." In the foreign policy area, another much used gambit is to arbitrarily claim a questionable act is necessary "to prevent a confrontation with Soviet Russia likely to result in nuclear war."

Flattery & Blame. Krock complains about the "social flattery" which the President directs toward Washington newsmen, but he is forced to confess: "I have myself on occasion been infused with the warmth of good will engendered by this courtship of a suitor of such charm and unique distinction."

As Krock of course knows, Ike blamed many of his troubles on Truman policies, and defended his nonaction in certain foreign situations in the name of peace. Truman, for his part, blamed many of his troubles on poor old Herbert Hoover.

What seems to irritate many critics most about President Kennedy is that he is a charming, voluble, intelligent talker who has done his homework on most topics and is therefore successful in presenting his views, dammit. Without doubt, the whole Kennedy Administration has worked harder than almost any of its predecessors to persuade reporters of the desirability and eventual success of its policies.

At the end, Krock places the blame where it belongs. If "managed news'" is succeeding in concealing anything of importance, he says, "the onus rests on the printed and electronic press itself.''

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