Space Fiction by A.P.

"In the final moments of the flight," burbled a story in the New York Post, "the space passenger lost all sense of up and down." So. it seemed, had the Post as well as hundreds of other free-world newspapers that blasted off last week with an Associated Press report that Russia had shot a manned missile into space. For, despite such hedged headlines as the New York Daily News's REDS SAY ROCKET MAN ROSE 186 MI., it was palpably clear from the start that 1) the Reds had said no such thing, and 2) the coming of the Sputnik has infected even seasoned editors with the urge to hitch headlines to almost any misguided missile.

Competitive Flight. Last week's space junket took off on a typewriter at 7:52 p.m. Monday in Paris, where Agence France-Presse, on a telephoned tip from its Moscow Bureau Chief Constantin Zar-nekau, flashed: "For the first time, a man has been put aboard a Soviet rocket, it is believed in Western circles." Forty-one minutes later, after communicating with Moscow Bureau Chief Henry Shapiro, United Press put on the wire a wary note to editors stating that there were "rumors" in Moscow of a manned rocket but "no official confirmation." Reuters also sidled up to the story with its kid gloves on.

Then, about an hour and a half after the A.F.P. flash, the Associated Press, biggest news agency of them all, filed a Moscow-datelined bulletin (which was actually written in London): "The Soviet Union has launched an experimental rocket 300 kilometers into the atmosphere with a human aboard, reliable sources said here tonight." So began a competitive stratosphere flight that outdid all competitors in irresponsibility.

As deadlines neared for U.S. morning papers, A.P. aimed even higher, wider and wilder. Said its night lead, still without any confirmation: "Soviet Russia has shot a man-carrying rocket 186 miles into the air and the man parachuted safely back to earth, reliable sources said tonight." The A.P. noted in the third paragraph that there had been "no official announcement whatever," but added: "The official silence--in view of the rumors sweeping Moscow--led to some speculation that ... the manned rocket experiment may not have been a total success."

Astronaut. By next day, editors around the world had showered Moscow correspondents with their own rockets (correspondents' term for inquiries about competitors' stories). France-Soir and London's Daily Mail both ran Page One drawings of the compleat astronaut in space suit, breathing gear and seat belt. Said one query: "Like interview and first-person impressions." Demanded another: "Competition says it's woman, not man. Confirm."

Unable to confirm anything, the A.P. allowed early Tuesday that there were still "no hints as to the mystery traveler's identity"--but volunteered no hints as to the identity of its mysterious news informants. Turning to such tried-and-true sources as Estes Kefauver and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Fred Whipple (who, said A.P., "expressed no surprise"), the A.P.--in common with big-city newspapers--kept the astronaut aloft with scientific and political punditry.

Aged on the Grapevine. But the A.P.'s rocket was already burning up. After a phone conversation with its Moscow Bureau Chief William Jorden, the punctilious New York Times warned that "the rumors be treated with the greatest caution." From Washington,* the U.P. filed a detailed story on the State Department's wholly logical explanation for the spaceman stories: they had apparently been inspired by an Orson Wellesian rocket opera broadcast Sunday by Radio Moscow. Next day, in an intercontinental missive to editors, the A.P. said its two Moscow staffers (Bureau Chief Harold K. Milks and Roy Essoyan) heard the rumors well before the Wellesian broadcast and let them age 48 hours before breaking the story. Their "reliable" sources: "An Eastern European correspondent, then another, and then a Western correspondent who reported hearing it from a third East European correspondent," and finally "a Western embassy." If the world's biggest wire service had any misgivings about decanting such grapevine, it was not until the three-day-old story had collapsed that the A.P. betrayed them, and finally made an admission that was rare, grudging--and little-played in A.P. papers: "The Associated Press erred Monday."

* Where the headlines gave rise to the quip: "Nervous as a midget in Moscow."

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