Jab to the Nose

Since TV first thrust its nose into the press-conference tent, there has been less and less room for newspapermen. Camera-phobic reporters growled mightily, and even nipped back on occasion by putting TV cameras out of action (TIME, May 21, 1956). Last week in Los Angeles, growing antagonism between press and TV flared into open combat; newsmen on three of the city's four major dailies (holdout: the evening Mirror-News) were obeying standing orders to boycott press conferences rather than take any guff from TV.

The feud boiled over after a press conference for Admiral Arleigh Burke last March, at which Herald-Express Reporter Ed Prendergast walked out, protesting that a CBS TV and radio crew had no right to freeload questions and answers developed by newspapermen. Defending his stand in Editor & Publisher, Veteran Hearstman Prendergast, 58, argued that microphones invariably preclude "the free play and sharp, sometimes naughty, often nasty-type questions" by which a skillful news reporter extracts news and color from an interview. Said he: "We are not a radio and TV production team. Our duty is to the news, our craft and our newspapers." Most editors agreed, and the boycott was on.

To heal the breach, a group of TV and radio men drew up an elaborate set of ground rules under which, they hoped, both press and TV could cover conferences without conflict; e.g., they promised not to "obstruct the orderly process of the question-and-answer period." While Mirror-News City Editor Jim Bassett postponed judgment after a huddle with the broadcasters, other Los Angeles editors rejected any compromise.

The newspapermen's main objection: TV stations seldom send a trained reporter along with the technical crews they assign to press conferences, thus contribute nothing to the story except hot lights, silly questions and endless delays for retakes. "They should handle their own news instead of cashing in on our brains and experience," snapped Bud Lewis, city editor of the Los Angeles Times (whose KTTV is one of the city's busiest cashers-in). "The TV people are afraid of separate conferences, because they just don't have the trained reporters to handle them."

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