Dear Times-Reader

Recently during the La Prensa-Peron controversy this letter reported something of our attitude here at TIME toward the difficult problem of how to handle the news from the Argentine--Peron being what he is and the problems of our State Department being what they are.

Several TIME-readers wrote us about that letter, enough to make me want to put before you our decisions on another problem of journalistic procedure that has recently come up.

Congressional hearings--how should they be projected to the public?

TIME, as you probably know, presented (with the American Broadcasting Company) a daily telecast of the Kefauver committee hearings in New York and Washington. The program was networked over ABC stations in more than 30 U.S. cities, where almost everyone within reach of a TV set seems to have dropped everything else to see what was going on.

Tens of thousands have written to thank us. From Hammond, Ind.: "I, with millions of others, consider the television of the crime investigation one of the greatest contributions to the people of America as a whole that has ever taken place."

But a few watchers objected. Their major complaint: that the witness suffered an "invasion of privacy"--although, of course, it was a public hearing, and the room was packed with spectators.

The case for the investigating committee--and full public knowledge of its work--rests on basic democratic principles. Because the lawmaker must understand the conditions he is to regulate, such committees are about as old as legislatures. Because the U.S. public often makes up its mind first--and the Congress, with its sensitive ear, follows--the citizen must learn the facts before he can give strong support to sensible laws. Some lasting laws that grew out of noted investigations: the Federal Reserve Act. of 1913, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and the Securities Exchange Act.

The committee goes still further. A public look at a center of trouble may work faster than Congress' debates to bring corrections. Frank Costello, for one, now faces a double threat from contempt and perjury trials. Two other witnesses have been indicted for perjury.

The effect on an awakened citizenry will never be fully traced. Many wrote us to say that they are going to take far more pains to vote for men they can trust. Local bookies, now that they are known to fit a national tie-up, are getting the hard eye.

Results like this are not new to congressional investigations. The late Senator "Tom" Walsh knew that he was up against long odds in 1923. Washington reporters came to his aid -- and brought the country with them. In fact, some of the questions that he used to uncover Harry Sinclair's operations were passed up to him on bits of paper by reporters. The rest is the history of Teapot Dome.

After this hearing showed how the press can help congressional investigators, coverage of committee sessions stepped up. They made news. By 1933 CBS's Bob Trout became the first man to take a radio microphone into a committee room, and radio gradually improved its coverage of hearings.

None of these milestones produced audiences like the ones that followed the Kefauver hearings on their TV sets. We are proud to have taken part in the use of television to increase public interest in a news event so important to the country's welfare. And we are grateful for the opportunity it has given us to learn more about this new medium of mass communication.

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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