Howe Behind the News

Quincy Howe is a cultured, loquacious, birdlike Bostonian with a famous father (Pulitzer Prize Biographer Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe), a shrewd editorial sense, a mercurial mind. For twelve years he applied it to foreign affairs for The Living Age; for the last five it has glided around the offices of Simon & Schuster. For years Editor Howe was the No. 1 sniffer-out of British influence and propaganda in the U. S. His England Expects Every American To Do His Duty (1937) was hailed and reprinted in the Anglophobe Hearst press; his Blood Is Cheaper Than Water (1939) glibly tracked the U. S. "war party" from J. P. Morgan's to Communist headquarters and back. Last week Quincy Howe, his Anglophobia somewhat chastened since France and Chamberlain fell, sped his mercurial mind over the whole field of war news.

The News and how to Understand it (Simon & Schuster; $2) is subheaded In spite of the newspapers, In spite of the magazines, In spite of the radio. A practitioner in two of these fields (he is news commentator for WQXR), Howe is critical of all three. Refreshingly fair and accurate (especially in comparison with muckraking books like George Seldes' Lords of the Press), Howe's book is an amusing, gossipy chat about the men and corporations that bring the news to America: their biases, their qualities, their wives. His opinions:

>Of the millions of words of news Americans get. nine in ten are not facts but opinion. To illustrate, Howe takes a sunrise, sunset, moon and tide report of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, presents it as it might have been written by A. P., U. P., I. N. S., Dorothy Thompson, Winchell, Lippmann, etc. Hugh Johnson version: "New Deal Janissaries are telling the world they have improved on Joshua who made the sun stand still. . . . Now I happen to know more about this subject of sun, moon and tides than I do about anything else. . . . If an outfit that calls itself the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey can do this kind of job, what in the hell is the matter with the United States Army? . . . "

>Because of competition-by-headlines ("sensations sell papers"), U. S. newspaper readers are more misinformed about this war than they were about the last. "Accuracy has become a matter of secondary importance.

>Only newspapers with comprehensive foreign coverage of their own are the New York Times and Chicago News. "Between 1914 and 1924, the Times all but achieved Dominion status"; now it has a " mild but diminishing British flavor."Cost of the News's foreign service: $1,000 a day.

>Timesmen Hugh Byas, G. E. R. Gedye, P. J. Philip, Frederick Birchall, Augur, Walter Duranty are all British subjects. Louis Lochner, A. P.'s Berlin chief, was Henry Ford's secretary on the Peace Ship, is married to a German. Robert (Pearson &) Allen is so sore at Hitler that"he has his wife drilling with a gun."

>Uncensored is an isolationist weekly newsletter of which Quincy Howe is a sponsor; he classes it among propaganda letters that "peddle dope to addicts."Advises Radio Commentator Howe: "If you don't like radio commentators, pass them up. You will not be missing much."

>Among magazines, TIME, LIFE and FORTUNE are"too vital"to be"analyzed." Nevertheless Howe gives a short chapter to them, larded with numerous gossip-begotten errors of detail but closer to the truth than most accounts. Astonishing remark: that because Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Luce were in the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, "the editorial policy of TIME promptly underwent a sea change."

>Another Howe bloomer: he recommends newspaper financial writers because they "simply cannot afford to engage in wishful thinking. "

>Other Howe maxims: Inside and confidential stuff is usually false; propaganda should be recognized rather than resisted; "Don't be too concerned . . . about 'the interests.' The chief interest of most newspaper publishers is to sell papers."

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