"Objectivity" Rampant

To the U.S. press, no less than to the U.S. State Department, the uninvited guest from Moscow posed a real dilemma. Behind the little black mustache of Anastas I. Mikoyan, Soviet First Deputy Premier, resided two men. One--the official emissary of a state dedicated to world conquest--was well concealed by the other: a good-will salesman, radiating charm, beaming his subtle pitch directly at the people, and possessing the built-in news value of a mysterious visitor from a mysterious land. The dilemma was: How to report on the fascinating, amiable salesman while keeping a clear eye on the suspicious nature of his wares?

Unbalanced Account. The papers played Mikoyan big. In Minneapolis the Tribune gave him as much space as it had devoted to Queen Elizabeth's 1957 visit to the U.S. In two days in Los Angeles he rated five to six columns daily from each of the four papers. When Detroit played Mikoyan's host, the News ran four front-page stories the same day, also turned over most of an inside page to detailed coverage of his stay. At week's end, the New York Times had yet to break the Mikoyan lease on Page One.

As a highly newsworthy visitor, Mikoyan deserved extensive coverage. But most papers, in giving him this due, leaned over backward to preserve the "objectivity" in which the U.S. press takes inordinate pride. Most stories ran as straightforward accounts of the rubberneck tour, without qualifications, without reservations, without showing cautious awareness of the other Mikoyan, the calculating Russian emissary, who followed Tourist Mikoyan everywhere he went. Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times, who spent six years in Moscow watching the Soviet's ways, filed Baedeker-like stories in which both the real Mikoyan and Salisbury's Moscow wisdom were invisible.

"Warm Wind." Here and there, a paper abandoned objectivity, but generally with such heavy-handed scorn as to be self-defeating. The New York Daily News larded its stories so lavishly with sarcasm ("The Deputy Premier showed a capitalistic-type interest in Macy's varied wares--and didn't steal a thing") that the reader was invited only to sympathize with the victim. The Chicago American vented its spleen in a front-page box: "Everyone is asking, 'Who sent for him?' " For the most part, the press attempted to balance its Mikoyan account with sound editorials and sharp cartoons. But even on the editorial pages, there were some solos of Mikoyan praise. "If all Soviet officials were always as amiable as Mikoyan," beamed the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "there would be no cold war."

What emerged from the pages of U.S. newspapers was the figure of a craftily intelligent, ingenuously friendly. Soviet-type Rotarian, a capitalist at heart, who appealed to American vanity by praising American ways and American machinery. The Soviet press took careful and exultant note of the picture the U.S. press presented. "A Warm Wind from Moscow," paeaned the Moscow Literary Gazette,*quoting Mikoyan's "peace-loving utterances" and noting "the passionate desire of the Americans to be rid of the exasperating cold war." The U.S. press did not buy Salesman Mikoyan's wares, but in the name of objectivity it made them look pretty good.

*Which dredged U.S. history for a parallel to Mikoyan's visit, recalled how good-will Ambassador Ben Franklin soothed monarchist France's prejudices and suspicions, successfully sold him self and the infant U.S. republic.

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