A Balanced Report

Public speakers are often unhappy about the way newspapers report their talks. They complain that the papers tend to play up one striking headline point or phrase, play down or even ignore the main theme. The usual answer of newsmen is that speakers themselves don't know what is news, often bury the noteworthy parts. But last week a public speaker who is also an able editor took issue, in a letter to the New York Times, with the way the paper had reported two recent talks, and thereby read newsmen a lesson on their editorial responsibilities.

High Compression. The Rev. Robert C. Hartnett, S.J., editor of the Jesuit weekly America, accused the Times of ballooning some casual anti-Joe McCarthy remarks he had made into headlines, at the expense of a "balanced report" of his considered views on how academic freedom and civil liberties are being affected by the congressional investigations.

In a 40-minute talk on academic freedom at New York University, said Father Hartnett, "I never so much as alluded to Senator McCarthy ... At the end of the talk, someone asked what I thought of [him]. After explaining that he was not investigating subversives in education, I offhandedly . . . expressed my opinion of the Senator's antiCommunism. Much to my surprise, the Times . . . ran a short report of my talk headed MCCARTHY ATTACKED BY CATHOLIC EDITOR. The story highly compressed my answer to a question. It reduced to a single sentence . . . the substance of what I had to say. It so happens that what I said on the subject of academic freedom was not much to the Times's liking, whereas what I said . . . about Senator McCarthy was."

Hypnotic Criticism. At Colgate University, Hartnett made a passing observation that Senator McCarthy was open to "serious criticism" for "his investigation" of Editor Wechsler of the New York Post (TIME, May 11). "Again the Times seemed to be hypnotized by criticism of [McCarthy], this time to a point where it omitted mention of my topic altogether.". The topic: "Civil Liberties and the Communist Threat."

The episodes, wrote Hartnett, had prompted him to ask the press two questions. First, "Is a newspaper justified . . . in reporting only . . . the remarks of a speaker which happen to coincide with its own editorial positions? In other words, is it reporting what speakers say or only the reflections of its own views ... in what speakers say? Secondly, has not a newspaper some obligation (to the speaker himself) to give a fairly balanced account . . .?" Hartnett was considering a drastic remedy: "I for one am strongly tempted to omit public criticism of Mr. McCarthy in the future, because I do not want to continue to distract reporters or editors from opinions I wish to express on other subjects ... If the Senator is guilty of publicity-seeking, as the Times very likely thinks he is, he seems [to get] gratuitous cooperation from anti-McCarthy publications, including, I fear, the Times."

In an editorial note, the Times sternly rejected "the implication that this reporting was in any way connected with its editorial position." But it did agree that it had an obligation to give a balanced account of his speech. It had fallen short, said the Times lamely, because of "incomplete reporting and editing."

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