The President and the Press: II

The unexpectedly spirited reaction of the country's newspapers to President Kennedy's suggestion that they censor themselves has in a small way helped to illustrate exactly how much of a red herring his speech to the National Publishers Association actually was. He tried very cleverly to lead the papers away from reflection on their own inadequate and uncritical coverage of U.S. foreign policy in general, the Cuba affair in particular; in a tone of perplexity that blamed neither press nor President for any crises whatever he attempted to distract attention to the far less important question of how much information the Administration should release, and how much the papers should use.

The problem of criticism has been discussed here earlier, and now that some of its aspects are illuminated it is possible to consider the much easier problem of information. The answers to Kennedy's apparently awkward dilemma are strikingly clear. Some censoring must always be done, for military and intelligence operations at least thrive only in secrecy. But if it must be done, the government must do it, and the papers can least of all afford to be party to it. For if a paper choose to dummy all dispatches unfavorable to the U.S. on page 25 or not at all, if it discipline itself to believe entirely what a State Department spokesman says, it is already in that dark region where information and opinion are not easily distinguishable.

The newspapers, in other words, should not be asked to do anything that will prevent them from shattering the antique concept of non-partisan support of the Administration's foreign policy. The concept is no less dangerous because it is so old; Senator Vandenberg's aims no longer seem to apply. In a curious way the government has helped perpetuate the idea (Kennedy called it "utopia" in his speech) that not only politics but dissent as well stop at the waterline, by recruiting many of its most active critics into the Executive branch. The concentration of a body of experts, combined with too much talk of national purpose, has bred the singular philosophy that the Administration's planners are capable of producing a single, right foreign policy.

The papers ought not to be denied the chance to doubt that they can. Perhaps the government must continue to tell us lies, but the press cannot be encouraged to suffer the disgrace of believing them in public.