The Press: Joe's Blow

After Joe McCarthy subjected New York Post Editor James A. Wechsler, one of his bitterest editorial enemies, to a five-hour inquisition last spring, a special eleven-man committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors sat down to decide whether the incident was a general threat to the freedom of the press. Last week the committee reported that it could reach no decision, vaguely concluded: "It is the responsibility of every editor to read the transcript and decide for himself."

But four of the committee members issued their own minority report. They were led by the committee's own chairman,* Washington Post Managing Editor J. Russell Wiggins, whose paper has blasted McCarthy in editorials and cartoons almost as often as the New York Post has. Said the minority: "We are compelled by every command of duty to brand this and every like threat to freedom of the press, from whatever source, as a peril to American freedom . . . Congressional interrogation such as [this], if frequently repeated, would extinguish, without passage of a single law, that free and unfettered reporting of events and comment thereon upon which the preservation of our liberties depends ... A press put to the frequent necessity of explaining its news and editorial policies to a United States Senator, armed with the full powers of the Government . . . is not a free press—whether the Senator be a good or a bad Senator."

Joe McCarthy, whose real energy is saved for personal feuds and who always starts a new attack before anybody can beat him on an earlier one, reacted with complete predictability. He wrote a letter to the seven committee members who had not signed the minority report, demanding that they investigate not-only Wiggins but his paper as well, or otherwise Congress might have to do it for them. It is the Washington Post which imperils freedom of the press, added McCarthy blandly: "[The Post) has been one of my most intemperate and dishonest critics." Said Wiggins: "Nothing would please me more" than a study by his colleagues of the Post's "full, accurate and fair ... coverage of ... Senator McCarthy."