Reporting: Fear of Poisoned Wells

Nothing in recent memory has quite so disturbed and transfixed the U.S. press as the street battles during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Mayor Daley and reporters have turned the confrontation into a sort of Punch and Judy morality show, and last week they were still pummeling away.

The Los Angeles Times' political editor, Carl Greenberg, intoned that "when newsmen are slugged, clubbed, arrested and generally harassed in the performances of their duties, we are approaching the end of freedom." Daley swung back with a so-called "white paper" (see THE NATION). There would have been no trouble at all, he...