Into the Trap

Journalists must be ever mindful of the mousetrap. They must make sure that personal preferences do not lead them into unquestioning acceptance or rejection of a candidate's political views. Last week, mousetrapped by George McGovern, whom he admires, New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker performed a manful act. He chastised McGovern and apologized for allowing himself--and his readers--to be misled.

The issue was McGovern's complicated and controversial proposals for changing the welfare system and redistributing income. In preparation for his June 4 column, Wicker spoke to McGovern aides and received from them a seven-page explanation of the program's arithmetic. The resulting article was plainly sympathetic to McGovern's approach. But specifics of the plan have been so seriously questioned by experts (TIME, June 26) that McGovern has waffled on the subject.

Last week Wicker laid out some of the questionable points in the McGovern math, which he said had been "accepted far too uncritically, with the result that the McGovern income program was made, in this column, to seem more practical and carefully worked out than it is." By implication, he admitted that like any professional, he should have double-checked the figures with disinterested experts. Wicker continues to support McGovern's general ideas about sharing the wealth, but declined to take himself--or the candidate--off the hook. What matters, he said, "is that expert economic analysis so impugns the program that it was either extremely careless or deceptive to put it forward in that form."

The moral, said Wicker, was clear. "This was a journalistic sin for which responsibility is hereby accepted; it was also reaffirmation of the cardinal lesson that every political reporter learns and re-learns--that everything said and done by politicians seeking or holding power has to be constantly challenged."

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