Reporters: Cold War in Washington

For weeks, the Washington press corps has been sniping at the President from every possible angle. "What is happening," complained the New York Herald Tribune's Roscoe Drummond, "is that Mr. Johnson is in the process of destroying the presidential press conference as Washington correspondents have known it for 32 years." Wrote New York Times Associate Editor James Reston: "He has not yet found time to clarify his foreign policies or the proper forum in which to articulate them, and this is hurting his Administration both at home and abroad." Lamented New York Daily News Columnist Ted Lewis: "The most marked difference between the Johnson Administration and others in our lifetime is the lack of trustworthy news leaks as to what is in the works at the presidential level." On Manhattan's TV Channel 13, Columnist Rowland Evans demanded: "Whose purpose is served by this curious shying away from the press?" Evans' answer: "The only conceivable beneficiary is the President himself."

Memories of J.F.K. Some columnists are not only peppering the President for his wayward press relations; they are also slicing up the heretics in their own camp who have had the temerity to say a kind word for Johnson. "The President was clearly the direct source of descriptions of his irritation with a 'too demanding press' by two syndicated columnists," wrote the New York Times's Arthur Krock, acidly referring to Fellow Columnists William S. White and Marquis Childs. Their words, said Krock, "are words with the bark on, affixed with the brand L.B.J." It was an odd complaint from a man who has had many an exclusive Presidential interview in the past.

Johnson's hapless press secretary, George Reedy, has also been a handy target. In the Washington Post, Columnist George Dixon went so far as to speculate that the "President has Reedy's office bugged and eavesdrops on all news briefings."

Johnson's press troubles have burgeoned until they have become a major news story in themselves. Gone is much of the easy informality of the early days of his Administration when Johnson met and joshed with reporters, invited them and their families to a picnic on the White House lawn. Though he still calls reporters in for occasional off-the-cuff conferences, Johnson's affair with the press as a whole has temporarily soured. Reporters have begun to reminisce nostalgically about the Eisenhower and Kennedy years when press conferences were regularly scheduled well ahead of time and there were no rude surprises, no unventilated rooms with not enough chairs to go around. It would almost seem they have already forgotten how much they grumbled about Ike's scrambled syntax and Kennedy's agility at ducking embarrassing questions.