Too Much & Not Enough

Criticism is the order of the day at the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. From inside journalism, it usually involves shortcomings of public figures and organizations that are telling newsmen the wrong things--or not telling them enough. From outside, it is the newspapers that are not saying enough, or are saying it wrong. Last week's meeting produced both complaints.

According to CORE's national director, Floyd B. McKissick, "Today there are only two kinds of statements a black man can make and expect that the white press will report. First is an attack on another black man calling him an Uncle Tom [a charge McKissick himself has made once or twice] or a fanatic or a black nationalist. The second is a statement that sounds radical, violent, extreme--the verbal equivalent of a riot--Watts put into words."

McKissick urged the editors to "think back over the past months. You will begin to realize that the Negro is being rewarded by the public media only if he turns on another Negro and uses his tongue as a switchblade, or only if he sounds outlandish, extremist or psychotic." He added: "How many of you report even what middle-class Negroes do? Your social column, your engagement column, your local events column. We'd like to feel that what we did on the local scene was important. You know, we like news clippings too."

A committee of the assembled editors offered some criticism of its own. Although an unofficial poll of some 100 editors showed that most of them support President Johnson on Viet Nam, the committee chose to add that "the war has escalated to the accompaniment of an almost unbroken succession of pronouncements that it was going in the opposite direction, or at least that something else was happening." The committee noticed "some slight improvement" in recent months, but in general, "President Johnson continues to hurt his image and his credibility by consistently trying to make the news sound or seem better than it is."

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