Publishers' Code (Cont'd)

Following three weeks of nearly incessant huddling, the American Newspaper Publishers' Association last week submitted an NRA code for newspapers (TIME, Aug. 14). Hard-boiled Administrator Johnson said of it: "They've been in here with that code several times. I shot it back to them every time because it was unsatisfactory. . . . It's still unsatisfactory."

General Johnson did not specify what points in the code did not suit him, but most observers guessed they were: 1) the clause exempting the Press from any licensing provision ("freedom of the Press"). 2) The clause exempting "professional persons" (presumably reporters, copyreaders, re-writemen) from the 40-hr, maximum week. 3) Use of child labor (newsboys). The great majority of publishers had promptly signed this code. Some of them, including the Hearst and Scripps-Howard chains, announced they would extend the 40-hr. limit to all editorial employes. Other publishers criticized the code bitterly. The Milwaukee Journal called the code "a disgrace to the newspaper profession. . . ." The little Reading (Pa.) Times was "ashamed." The Philadelphia Record thought it a "grave mistake" to exclude editorial workers, "notoriously underpaid," from the benefits of the code. Correspondent Paul Y. Anderson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found it "not a code at all, but a charter of exceptions."

A contradiction arose between the Mc-Cormick-Patterson newspapers Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News. The tabloid Daily News, run by Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, was the first Manhattan daily to earn the Blue Eagle by signing the NRA's blanket code. Editorially it scoffed at the ANPA's talk about freedom of the Press. But the Tribune is run by Capt. Patterson's choleric cousin Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick, who can get highly excited on the subject of Press freedom. The Tribune signed no blanket code and last week it printed a long, solemn editorial defending the new code's stipulation against Press licenses. Excerpts:

"The publishers in specifically reserving the constitutional rights of the Press do not imply that the present Government tends towards a misuse of authority. It is merely reiterated and reaffirmed that nothing in the Emergency Act shall be construed as surrendering or invalidating the constitutional rights of a free Press. It is strongly felt that even the pro forma admission of the licensing system into the publication of newspapers would hark back to the older days when the printing press could be run only by Government consent. The power to license contains the power to prohibit.

"The best intentioned men in office may resent a vigorous criticism of policies to which they are committed and of measures taken by them to execute their purposes. . . . The licensing and supervision involve insecurity and some censorship other than that which would be imposed by libel laws and rules of public decorum and decency."

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