News v. the Grasshopper

The grasshopper plague that was swirling over Colorado last week brought misfortune to farmers, mischief to tourists, and misery to Denver's Rocky Mountain News, a Scripps-Howard tabloid (circ. 157,848) with a tendency to swat away indiscriminately at any story that flies by.

At the first whirl of wings last month (TIME, June 16), the News had urgently tagged the grasshoppers as a major menace: "Eastern Colorado faces a disastrous plague." The normally Republican News even applauded when Democratic Governor Steve McNichols got $1,500,000 for hopper-fighting out of the legislature after the Federal Government had turned down his request for $10 million. Exhorted the News: "There is no time to lose."

Then party-lining Republicans, defending Washington's refusal to allocate disaster funds, charged that the grasshoppers were a figment of McNichols' Democratic imagination. And the News abruptly decided that the grasshoppers were nothing but Democrats on the wing. In an editorial starkly headed, "We Failed Our Responsibility," the News confessed that it had ignored frequent reports that the plague was "grossly exaggerated," and concluded: "The Rocky Mountain News, as well as other well-meaning citizens of the state, were caught up in one of Governor McNichols' manipulations during a political year. And we don't like it."

Two days later the grasshoppers swarmed in to spoil the News's crop of political hay. Burying the story on page 12, the News reported unhappily that pilots were climbing to 10,500 ft. to get over clouds of grasshoppers in eastern Colorado. Next day the News carried (on page 26) a story from its own reporter, who had joined a group of newsmen touring the infested area at the Governor's invitation. Their man reported that newsmen "waded through waves of hoppers" and that "overhead millions of hoppers darted northward like silver minnows in the sea of blue sky."

Unabashed, the News went on to complete its 360DEG coverage of the story. Under a picture of grasshoppers munching on a sparse hunk of cactus, the News last week blandly identified Governor McNichols as the man "who has been criticized by some federal officials and Republicans for 'magnifying' the situation."

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