"Those Outside Our Family"

Ike's convention speech was drawing respectful applause, but he had not really set his inflammable audience afire. Suddenly he found the match. "Let us particularly scorn the divisive efforts of those outside our family," he said, "including sensation-seeking columnists and commentators . . ." The delegates did not let him finish his sentence. They leaped off their chairs, shook their fists at the glass television booths high above, jeered newsmen in the aisles on the convention floor.

On the rostrum, Eisenhower seemed astonished at the reaction to his statement. When he could be heard, he added, "because, my friends, I assure you that these are people who couldn't care less about the good of our party." The crowd roared anew. Ike later explained that he had penciled the remark into his speech almost as an afterthought to express his "resentment" at journalists who "write think pieces and ascribe motives to others when they don't know what they are talking about." Ike was irritated weeks ago by a New York Herald Tribune column by Roscoe Drummond, who interpreted a Trib-solicited Eisenhower statement as meaning that the former President was hard set against Goldwater's nomination. More recently Ike seethed at press criticism over his insistence on staying neutral in the G.O.P. presidential race.

But Ike's pique did not nearly explain the emotional scene in the Cow Palace. That scene's significance lay in the far-reaching fact that in many areas of the U.S. a latent suspicion that the press is sometimes unfair has hardened into a belief that, especially in matters of politics, it is partisan and untrustworthy. To almost all Goldwater's admirers, the press represents the "Eastern establishment" that is out to get Barry. They think primarily of press, radio and television and its influential New York-Washington base; newsmen are viewed as liberals who distort Goldwater's views and conspire against him. During Goldwater's pre-convention campaign, reporters often met hostile airport crowds, with Goldwater partisans glaring at them and demanding: "Why don't you tell the truth about Barry?"

The dislike and suspicion of the press that was displayed in the Cow Palace is by no means entirely unjustified. Segments of the press have sometimes sounded as extremist as any Goldwater extremist. Thus Drew Pearson began a column last week with the observation: "The smell of fascism has been in the air at this convention." Joe Alsop, who opined last March that "no serious Republican politician, even of the most Neanderthal type, any longer takes Goldwater seriously," now declared it a "fact" that "many Goldwater enthusiasts are genuine fanatics, like the majority of his delegates."

"Racism & Jingoism." Walter Lippmann, who has complained about Goldwater's inconsistency, wrote last year: "A good argument can be made, I think, that it would be healthy if at least once, after 40 years of frustration, the 'true' Republicans had their own candidate. It might clear the air." But by last month he had changed his mind, writing: "In the light of history, tradition and principle, the nomination of Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate for President is as absurd as would be the nomination of Governor Wallace as the Democratic candidate for President." Lippmann last week claimed that Goldwater's election would lead to "a global, nuclear, anti-Communist crusade," and that he "appears to be gambling recklessly on racism and jingoism."

To the New York Times, Goldwater's nomination was "a disaster for the Republican Party, and a blow to the prestige and to the domestic and international interests of the United States." To the liberal New York Post, the adoption of a Goldwater-oriented platform and Ike's "retreat" meant that "the Birchers and racists have never before enjoyed so big a night under such respectable auspices."

"Black Brush." The Louisville Courier-Journal warned: "The nation may prepare itself for one of the ugliest campaigns in our history. The strategy of the Goldwater high command . . . must be to inflame every minority grievance, to stir up the dregs of our national spirit, to make respectable the emotions and prejudices of which we are secretly ashamed. This will be a campaign to sicken decent and thoughtful people, and the bitterness it will distill will linger long in our national life." The Chicago Daily News found that "for the zealots," Goldwater "has the invaluable ability to give a latent, fear-born prejudice a patina of respectability and plausibility." To the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The Goldwater coalition is a coalition of Southern racists, county-seat conservatives, desert rightist radicals and suburban backlashers."

A few days before the convention, there was a real smear. In a report from Germany, CBS's Daniel Schorr clearly implied that Goldwater would, on his planned (and now canceled) post-convention trip to Berchtesgaden, seek a liaison between U.S. conservatives and German "right-wing elements"--which, in the U.S., smacks of Naziism. Barry hit the ceiling, sputtered that the report was "nothing but--and I won't swear, but you know what I'm thinking--a dad-burned dirty lie." For a while he barred CBS cameras from his convention headquarters.

After his nomination, Barry had a few more choice words about the nation's news media. "I don't use the black brush on newspapers or the radio or TV," he told Phoenix TV Reporter Ralph Painter in a filmed interview. "Newspapers like the New York Times have to stoop to utter dishonesty in reflecting my views. Some of the newspapers here in San Francisco, like the Chronicle, are nothing but out-and-out lies."

On Second Thought. Despite the fact that some of the Goldwaterites' objections to the press are well taken, this is not the total picture. A large segment of the press has treated Goldwater with fairness in its news columns, dealt with him reasonably even when criticizing him in editorials. Most reporters are personally fond of him; some have even helped him out when his tongue seemed about to get him into trouble. While campaigning in San Diego, he once told reporters that it would be a good idea to get at the source of Communist supply lines to Viet Nam by striking South China--maybe with nuclear bombs. Incredulous newsmen read the statement back to him, asked if he really meant it. On second thought, he said he didn't, and little was written about it.

The real danger in Goldwater's intensifying feud with the press is that it might lead him to break off almost completely with the news gatherers, thus inhibiting the campaign and keeping the voter in the dark. If that happens, it will be as much Goldwater's fault as that of the press.

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