A Reprimand from Teacher

The pot roast at lunch was tender and tasty, but for all the. effect it had on Robert Maynard Hutchins, it might have been fire & brimstone. At the annual National Conference of U.S. Editorial Writers in Louisville, Ky. last week, the University of Chicago's chancellor gave the banqueting journalists hell, with bells on.

Said Hutchins: "I think you are teachers. I did not say you were good teachers . . . The argument that you must be good or you wouldn't have readers is ... like telling the disgusted radio listener that he can turn to three other stations and hear . . . programs just as bad ... If the purpose of a university is to have a lot of students, then the university that has the most is the best. If the purpose of a newspaper is to make a lot of money, then the newspaper that makes the most is the best. But I suggest that the purpose of [both] should be to this extent the same: they should both aim at public enlightenment."

Were the editorial writers doing any enlightening? Said Hutchins: "Look at what you did to the report of the Commission on the Freedom of the Press." Hutchins, who was chairman of the commission (TIME, March 31, 1947), said some editorial writers just plain lied about the report, and had ignored its criticisms.

Concluded Hutchins: "One thing that would be helpful would be to have you stop exhibiting neurotic symptoms every time anybody criticizes you. After all, your right to criticize is protected by a constitutional provision. But I never understood . . . that anybody who criticizes the press should be regarded as seeking to repeal this [constitutional] amendment."

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