The Press: Blackout in Houston

When does a daily newspaper, even with the best of intentions, have a right to suppress a major news story in its own backyard? Nowhere was this question more heatedly debated last week than in the city rooms and among the readers of Houston's three newspapers: the Post, the Chronicle, and the Press. The issue involved the toughest problem facing the U.S.'s largest segregated city: integration.

Two weeks ago, to end lunch counter sit-ins, white and Negro Houston civic leaders thrashed out an agreement desegregating the city's lunch counters. So that there would be no flare-ups when the change took place, all three Houston papers delayed publication of the news for one week, then buried it on the back pages. Radio and TV stations also went along with the news blackout. "The stores wanted to integrate the lunch counters at the least possible cost,'' explained one Houston editor lamely. "They wanted to lose neither Negro nor white business. They felt that not publicizing the event was their safest course of action."

Other Southern newspapers have buried or ignored integration stories before, but seldom have they met such angered reaction. All three Houston papers underestimated the ability of Houstonians to find out the news for themselves. The papers were besieged with angry calls. "I am opposed to integration," said one woman, "but I would rather have integrated lunch counters than controlled news." To call ers, Oveta Gulp Hobby's Post blandly replied that the blackout had been taken as "another public service of the Post to insure public safety." But for all their intentions of doing good by stealth, the Post, the Chronicle and the Press would certainly have found life simpler had they lived up to a motto engraved in stone over the entrance of the Houston Post building: LET FACTS BE SUBMITTED TO

A CANDID WORLD.