The Press: Apology

Joe Alsop, the Jeremiah of the syndicated columnists, is so addicted to the gloomy view that even when things are looking up, Alsop is looking down. "It is still too early to say,'' he once wrote, "that the worst result is already inevitable." Yet in the first days of the U-2 flap, Joe Alsop astonished his readers with a memorable statement: "There is also wonderful news in the bad news of the American plane that was shot down in the Soviet Union."

By last week, though, Alsop had reverted to his ordinary gloomy self and even while retracting his lapse into optimism was blaming it on the Eisenhower Administration. Wrote he: "When the U-2 story first broke, it was natural to read very good news into the bad news. The U2's most significant effect in this country was to give a false picture of the continuing power of the American deterrent. As usual, the Administration failed to set the record straight.

"The stark fact remains that there was no substance in the hopes which were temporarily raised by this reporter and other optimistic interpreters. Instead, there is the same old hard reality of the period of the missile gap, with all its potential dangers."