The Press: Discovery

When the Democratic National Committee put out the first issue of its Democratic Digest last week (TIME, July 13), Editor Clayton Fritchey explained that one of its main objectives was to help "redress the imbalance of ... the one-party editorial pages" in the U.S. press. No sooner had the first issue hit the stands than the Christian Science Monitor's Washington Bureau Chief Roscoe Drummond made a revealing discovery. Wrote Correspondent Drummond: "What one-party press is Fritchey talking about? More than half the cartoons [criticizing the Administration] and the clear majority of the editorial quotations . . . are from Republican newspapers. Could it be that the Democratic Digest is accidentally and unwittingly bearing evidence that the 'partisan' press is devoting itself substantially to nonpartisan appraisal?"