The Press and the President

President Roosevelt has for the last several years regarded the press less as the main instrument of public information than as an annoying Paul Pry, a kind of powerful Peeping Tom, bent on general snoopery. He has kept reporters at bay whenever he could. U.S. reporters and photographers were left on shore when Mr. Roosevelt met Winston Churchill in mid-ocean to draft the Atlantic Charter (the British press was present). After the Casablanca Conference was all over, newsmen were herded sheeplike for a staged news conference at which no questions could be asked. Mindful of the need for military secrecy, the press did not complain.

Last week the President for the first time applied the rules of military secrecy to a nonmilitary event. He changed an earlier plan to allow reporters to attend the United Nations food conference at Hot Springs, Va. May 18, and banned them, save for two plenary sessions at the beginning and the end. His reason: so that representatives may pursue their discussions without distractions. The press will be given a handout at intervals. In effect, the U.S. will be told only what the Administration chooses to tell.

All newsmen saw in this decision an unwarranted invasion of freedom of the press, and said so. Most plain-spoken was Scripps-Howard Columnist Raymond Clapper, who seldom gets angry in print. This time he did. Said he:

TIME, April 19, 1943

"This . . . doesn't do [the President's] judgment much credit. He is persisting in it in the face of the most vigorous objection from Elmer Davis, head of OWI, and I think from the State Department people themselves. . . .

"This is not a military conference. There is no reason for secrecy at all--not a single reason that any official can offer honestly except that Mr. Roosevelt wants it, and he wants it because he found it so much more pleasant at Casablanca not to have newspaper reporters around.

"We newspaper workers are not, perhaps, the most likable people in the world. We may not have the social graces that Groton and Harvard could have given us had we all been rich men's sons. . . .

"But we do try to learn and understand what is going on. All that can be said in our behalf is that we are hired to try as best we can to keep the American people informed about their Government. At least we are still assuming it is our Government--the Government that people are paying taxes to finance, buying bonds to support and for which their sons are dying in tropical jungles and dirty Africa."

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