The Press: Big Story

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Last week the U. S. press had its biggest story since 1918, and what might be its last chance for a long time to cover as big a story in comparative freedom. If war came, censorship would reign over most of the British Isles and the Continent. Faced with this opportunity, the press covered everything it could find out about Europe's Seven Days as no story had ever been covered before.

The Associated Press had no reporters in Europe, the United Press 500, International News Service 125. Among them they cabled nearly 1,000,000 words in a week. Telegraph and telephone lines were so jammed that at times messages were ten hours late. For six hours on Friday Germany was entirely cut off from the rest of the world, and at one time the U. P.'s Paris bureau had to telephone London by way of New York. Five newspapers had their own staffs abroad: the New York Times and Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune and News, the Christian Science Monitor. With the press services, they wrote the war news that the U. S. read last week.

The newspapers printed all the war news they could get. In the East it crowded most other news off the front pages. The supposed suicide of Bolivia's Strongman German Busch and the death of Sidney Howard (see p. 39) got brief treatment the day after Russia and Germany signed their Non-Aggression Pact. But there were exceptions. The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger thought the second indictment of Moe Annenberg* was equally big news that day and gave a four-column headline to it. And throughout the week the New York Herald Tribune consistently played down the bad news, played up every item that spelled possible peace.

The Times and the Daily News matched each other in excitement and general pessimism. Two days before the Russo-German trade treaty was announced, the Time's Herbert L. Matthews and Frederick T. Birchall cabled from Rome and London that war seemed almost certain. Both papers printed the story of the German submarine heading for Martinique, and the News went completely haywire by suggesting that the President send a couple of battleships to blow it out of the water. Next day the News apologized to its readers for getting too excited.

Scoops were few. The U. P. got a beat on the first German soldier killed in Poland. H. R. Knickerbocker of I. N. S. cabled an exclusive on Hitler's statement that he would rather fight now than later. Headlines were big and bold, but not as big and bold as they could be. The Times used a 36-point, eight-column spread three times during the week, saved its 60-point for worse news. Outside of New York few papers increased the size of their headlines. Headline-of-the-week was the Daily News's :

WAR, OR MY PEACE —HITLER