In the Ring

Columnist Drew Pearson, attacked by Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy in Washington (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), was not the only newsman to get roughed up last week. Other victims:

P: In Ellenton, S.C., Redbook Magazine Staffers Ike Vern and Booton Herndon were mobbed and beaten up when they attempted to photograph churchgoers leaving a Sunday-morning service. Vern and Herndon were doing a story on Ellenton's mass evacuation to make way for a hydrogen-bomb plant (TiME, Dec. 11). Explained Ellenton Police Chief John E. Steed: since being told they would have to move, "some people have been confused and hardly responsible for their actions."

P: In Brussels, free-spending Briton George Dawson, who was wanted by U.S. authorities in Germany on charges of shady dealings in war surplus, slugged it out with London Daily Express Reporter Bernard West when he tried to interview him. Later, Express officials ordered West to drop assault charges against Dawson, explained coolly: "Express staff reporters do not fight with hoodlums."

P: In Henryetta, Okla., Leland Gourley, publisher of the Henryetta Daily Free-Lance, was knocked down by an irate subscriber who objected to a Free-Lance story on the arrest of his 23-year-old daughter for speeding. Publisher Gourley's good-natured editorial comment: "Who wants to interfere with an American's right to take a poke at the editor?"

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