The Friendly Pool

The better one defines the position, the more indefinite the momentum becomes, and vice versa: or Deltag sb Deltap ~= h.

--Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

To most laymen, Physicist Werner Heisenberg's formula denning uncertainty is as incomprehensible as an income tax instruction sheet. But to Managing Editor Alfred Friendly of the Washington Post, it's as simple as p. What it means, Friendly explained in the current Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is that "the very act of observing or probing a phenomenon changes the phenomenon." Heisenberg developed his principle while studying electrons--tiny particles with properties that change even as they are being measured. Friendly applied the principle to the coverage of some important events by reporters in "battalion numbers." His conclusion: just as in Heisenberg's principle, reporters change the events--and usually for the worse.

Considering the cases of James Meredith at Ole Miss and Harvey Gantt at Clemson, Friendly said that "what might be a simple and quiet entrance of one Negro to one university could be transformed into a Roman circus, or indeed a riot, merely because we provided such an inviting audience and such a brilliant means for obtaining publicity." Friendly noted complaints that "the very presence of masses of reporters and photographers make what is already a difficult task close to impossible."

"Is there not some way," he asked, "by which we can discharge our duty to tell a legitimately interested public what transpires without at the same time adding fuel, by our very presence, to an already dangerous and inflammatory situation? Can we not work out some sort of pool?"

Friendly has a point. The shrieking housewives who made integration so difficult in New Orleans might have stayed home and done the dishes had there been no TV reporters to assure them of nationwide exposure, hair curlers and all--but then again, they might not. Men have wrought considerable mayhem without a single reporter in sight, and there have been cases where reporters have even served as a restraining leash. "To be sure," Friendly admitted, "the presence of the press at Clemson caused no trouble and did not create a bad story out of a good one."

He might also have added that the presence of only a single "pool" newsman, capable of taking only so many notes and absorbing only so many impressions, could result in the dismissal of a good story with an inadequate report. It could also severely curtail the flow of information to a "legitimately interested public."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.