News by Handout?

The Defense Department, trying to get some control over what is published about the armed services, last week announced two new ground rules for newsmen covering the Pentagon:

P:Secretary Lovett decreed that in the future the Defense Department, and not the individual services, will release news about new weapons. In that way, said he, all reporters will get the stories at the same time. And classified information will not be revealed on an off-the-record basis as background material. P:Defense's public-information officer, Andrew Berding, will no longer "protect" reporters on the trail of an exclusive story. In the past, when a reporter came to Berding's office to make the final check of an exclusive story, Berding gave the reporter information without making it general. He has gone on the theory that the hard-digging reporter was entitled to his beat. From now on, when a reporter asks questions that confirm a major story he already has, the entire press corps will be called in and given the story.

Newsmen promptly protested the new rules. Pentagon reporters, who are already hamstrung by the tightest security rules in Washington, pointed out both changes would mean that most of their news in the future would come from handouts. Some Pentagon reporters said that they would file stories, without checking with Berding, rather than take a chance that their exclusives would be released under the new rule to other newsmen.

Commented the Washington Post: "One of the troubles with Government news handouts, necessary as they often may be, is that they tend to discourage original reporting and newsgathering enterprise . . . No one can quarrel with the Pentagon that on news of 'transcendent importance' there should be simultaneous release to all news media. But there are relatively few such stories--not enough surely, to warrant a general and vague rule susceptible of misrepresentation and abuse. The only result of the order, it seems to us, will be to put a premium on irresponsibility."

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