Choosing Up

This week is celebrated by the press as National Newspaper Week. Candidates Roosevelt and Dewey vied with each other in tributes to the U.S. press--to its "courage, loyalty and integrity" (Roosevelt), to "the freest, most interesting and most informative press in the world" (Dewey).

Despite the Presidential overture, a considerable majority of the U.S. press continued, as usual in recent years, to favor the Republican candidate. As usual, New Dealers cited this fact as evidence that the "power of the press" is vastly overrated. What they failed, as usual, to take into account was that in most U.S. newspapers political partisanship is largely confined to the editorial page, while in the relatively impartial--and much better-read--news columns the President maintains a consistent advantage, through his power to blanket unfavorable news by making favorable or exciting news at will. (An outstanding instance: President Roosevelt's sensational "quarantine the aggressors" speech at Chicago in 1937, while the furor over Mr. Justice Black's former Klan membership was at its height.)

By last week most of the press had already chosen up sides in the 1944 Presidential election.* Some "independent" choices of the past fortnight:

P: Of 139 labor newspapers surveyed by the Federated Press, 117 were for Roosevelt, 19 were neutral; only one, the independent Central Labor Journal of Salina, Kans., was actively for Dewey. But the Pittsburgh Courier, largest U.S. Negro newspaper, came out for Dewey. Of the Negro press's two other "big three," the Baltimore Afro-American appeared to be leaning toward Dewey, while the Chicago Defender was still ardently pro-Roosevelt.

P: The Saturday Evening Post, for Landon and Willkie in 1936 and 1940, startled nobody by declaring for Dewey in 1944. The Chicago Daily News Dewey declaration was little more surprising. But ears perked when the potent New York Times, pro-Willkie in 1940, scornfully observed: "With his speech ... at San Francisco it seems to us that Mr. Dewey just about completed the process of running for the Presidency on the domestic platform of the New Deal." Of foreign policy the Times last week observed: "Independent voters ... have looked to Governor Dewey for something more . . . than he has given them thus far. They still look for something more. There is still time for something more. But the time is growing short."

P: The Portland Oregon Journal, pro-Willkie in 1940, switched to Term IV because "war is the compelling issue." Frail, spunky Mrs. Maria Clopton Jackson, owner of the Journal's controlling stock, refused to interfere with her editors' decision, but insisted on voicing her dissent. Said she to reporters: "When someone is in power too long ... he gets to feeling as if he is the owner, not just the administrator of a trust. . . . My opinion of Mr. Truman is so severe that I would rather not say it."

* Editor & Publisher, in a nationwide survey of daily newspaper preferences, discovered: 57.9% for Dewey; 20.6% for Roosevelt; 21.5% undecided. In 1940, U.S. dailies were 66.3% for Willkie; 20.1% for Roosevelt; 13.5% neutral.

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