TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/56elect/56elect.004

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                                                                                August 20, 1956

THE PRESS

The Gutenberg Boys


     Into Chicago swarmed the biggest army of newsmen that ever
surrounded any event anywhere. By the time all of the
reporters, editors and background absorbers had shoved their way
into place, their number would total some 4,000, roughly two
newsmen for very delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
Biggest reason for the record: TV and radio, whose electronic
battalions outnumber other newsmen ("The Gutenberg boys," one
TV producer calls them) almost two to one.

     But despite the fact that this year's national political
conventions are geared for TV, the Gutenberg boys were
themselves more numerous than ever, and were sure to top the
record-breaking flood of 19,664,472 words that poured through
Western Union wires from both conventions in 1952. Not only were
many small-city dailies and weeklies covering a convention for
the first time, but press associations and major papers beefed
up their staffs (and more brass went along for the show). Some
staffs, like the 100-man word-and-picture teams assigned by the
Associated Press and the United Press, went on the job with
intricate battle orders and (for photographers and messengers)
identifying armbands to avoid confusion. As usual, the biggest
staff representing a single daily was assigned by the New York
Times, whose 19 men no doubt would file more words than any
other newspaper's corps. (The Times will poach on the electronic
preserve by using a TV circuit to send a daily ten-page,
high-speed facsimile edition (circ. 25,000) to the Republican
Convention in time for breakfast in San Francisco.)

     Map for Sunday Drivers. The expanded newspaper coverage is
largely an unintended product of TV, which acts as a spur to
competition. Because it whets reader interest in the
conventions, TV is also serving in effect as a commercial for
the printed word. Said Carroll Linkins, who has been one of
Western Union's press shepherds at the national conventions
since 1936: "If you see an event on TV, you want to read an
expert to see if he saw what you did."

     Newspapers also needed bigger staffs to meet their
readers' need for advance guidance on TV's vast convention
operations. Edwin A. Lahey, Washington bureau chief of the
Knight papers, sold his editors on doing a daily piece on what
TV would show that evening. "It's like putting a map in a
Saturday paper to help you take a Sunday drive," he explained.

     Keeping the Inside Track. Pad-and-pencil reporters had to
admit that the first major news breaks of the preconvention
week went to TV. Adlai Stevenson's support of a strong
desegregation plank reached the public first on film in
Newscaster John Daly's ABC show in an exclusive interview. Harry
Truman's endorsement of Governor Averell Harriman was anything
but exclusive; it came before a jammed ballroom of 800 --
probably the biggest press conference in history. But TViewers
saw it as it happened.

     Yet, on the basis of convention history, the Gutenberg
boys thought they would manage to keep the inside track. Said
U.P. General News Manager Earl Johnson: "After almost every
convention, you can put your finger on one development that
foretold the final result. The development can be weeks before
the delegates assemble or in an obscure room during convention
week. Almost never does it happen before the TV cameras. The key
to good convention coverage is to move in early with an
experienced staff and canvass scores of sources day and night."


August 27, 1956
Platform Editor

     When the lights went up at the Democratic National
Convention one night last week after the screening of a campaign
film, National Chairman Paul Mulholland Butler stepped to the
rostrum and spat out a challenge. Trembling with rage,
Democratic Chief Butler snapped that "one of the major networks
has failed to keep its commitment to present this documentary
film to the American people." By pointedly thanking NBC and ABC
for showing the movie, he put the finger on CBS as the offender.

     As a chorus of boos rose from the convention floor, some
delegates stood, shook their fists at the CBS booth above and
behind the rostrum and shouted, "Throw 'em out!" (Said one CBS
reporter who was on the floor: "I thought they were going to
smash our cameras".) Later, still fuming, toplofty Paul Butler
charged "absolute sabotage," demanded that CBS carry the film
with advance notice of its showing.

     No "Mere Conduits." Butler's blast caught CBS President
Frank Stanton sitting in a convention box alongside Harry
Truman's, sent him rushing to his network's backstage
headquarters. There Sig Mickelson, CBS vice president in charge
of the coverage, was already getting up the explanation: CBS had
made no commitment to show the half-hour film, actually showed
the last six minutes of it after carrying four brief interviews
with politicos, fill-ins by four of its commentators, and a
one-minute commercial. The network, said Mickelson mildly, was
simply "exercising our news judgment" in what it chose to show.

     In a wire to his good personal friend Paul Butler, Stanton
backed his staff. "I am shocked by your inflammatory attack,"
said the CBS chief. "Those who make the news cannot, in a free
society, dictate to broadcasters, as part of the free press, to
what extent, where, and how they shall cover the news.
Television and radio . . . are not mere conduits which must
carry everything which the newsmaker demands."

     Biting the Hand. Ever since Lawyer Butler came out of
South Bend, Ind. to become Democratic chairman, he has
persistently cried that the press -- "the one-party press" --
is unfair to Democrats. But his wail of "sabotage" against CBS
was a case of biting off the hand that had been feeding him. CBS
news coverage has been more than friendly to Butler's cause, and
the punditing of its top commentators, Edward R. Murrow and Eric
Sevareid, has been sharply slanted toward the Democratic side.
It was CBS that, out of its own pocket, set up hour-long
closed-circuit telecasts last month so that Butler and
Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall could give
instructions to delegates in both conventions. CBS also made a
kinescope of Keynoter Frank Clement rehearsing his big speech,
and Stanton himself gave the Tennessee governor pointers on TV
technique.

     Although Butler later tried to backtrack somewhat in his
accusations, he pressed his demand for a CBS showing and again
betrayed the chip he wears on his shoulder for the press at
large. Petulantly, he hoped that "the infant medium of TV [will]
not fall into some of the habits of the older medium of
newspaper reporting." If CBS did not meet his demand, he
threatened darkly, it might be inviting "legislation."

     "In the light of all the circumstances," CBS firmly
refused to yield. Moreover, all three networks informed Butler
that like editors of the older medium, they would go right on
calling their own shots. The cub reporter of U.S. journalism had
faced a challenge in its freedom, and had measured up.


Print v. Picture

     On the 16th floor of Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel,
Correspondent Rene MacColl of London's Daily Express rushed to
a down elevator. The elevator girl waved him back imperiously,
"Just a minute, sir," she said. "I'm on TV." Recounted MacColl:
"I looked around, and by God, she was. A huge glare box was
moving up behind me for an interview with her."

     Like Correspondent MacColl, newsmen in Chicago last week
sweated under the glare box at almost every turn. Already
widely resented by reporters as troublesome interlopers, the TV
cameras in unprecedented force imposed new hazards on the old
art of covering a political convention. Sometimes the newsmen
found themselves trapped in hotel corridors as the networks
jockeyed their massive apparatus near the candidates' suites,
often wielding it as a blockade against TV competitors. At least
once, the blockade kept reporters out of a candidate's room, and
cost them a story.

     "Stacked Like Cordwood." Indeed, the timing and form of
convention news breaks, on the floor and off, was shaped to the
demands of TV. Said one CBS producer: "The smart politicians
just automatically seem to give us priority." Said Atlanta
Constitution Editor Ralph McGill: "A reporter who doesn't
represent one of the big outfits doesn't have a chance any more
of getting in to talk with one of the big figures. The
politicians say: 'I'd rather be on TV. Why should I see this
writer?'" At one point, there were so many politicians queueing
for interviews at ABC's hotel studio that one of them,
Michigan's Governor Mennen ("Soapy") Williams, cracked: "We're
stacked up here like cordwood."

     But the ubiquitous TV eye produced new techniques and new
enterprise in the press. Every major news-gathering outfit
monitored the convention on the TV screen. Legmen still rushed
to the telephone to report news breaks to the wire services, but
the first United Press bulletin on the Truman endorsement of
Averell Harriman came from the rewrite man who saw it on TV.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's convention speech was hard to hear in
the hall, so the Associated Press used TV sets for coverage. In
New York, the Times took the tally on the presidential ballot
off the screen and rushed it to the composing room for its table
of how the states voted. For the word reporters, TV's advantage
put a new premium on cultivating sources, getting the kind of
candid not-for-attribution quotes that politicians hesitate to
share with the voters on TV, chasing politicians where the
cameras still cannot go: e.g., whenever Harriman nipped up the
back stairs from his suite to Harry Truman's, he was trailed by
half a dozen gasping newsmen.

     Old Story. In the face of the TV screen, the newspapers'
old running story of the full convention became somewhat less
important (as the newspaper's play-by-play of the baseball game
has become unimportant). The daily press threw new energy and
new talent into exploring the offbeat byways of color and
anecdote as well as the lofty heights of analysis and
interpretation. Ironically, some of the best punditry came not
from Chicago but from Washington, where Columnist Walter
Lippmann watched the convention on TV. Some of the sidebars ran
to outlandish trivia, e.g., the contents of Adlai Stevenson's
laundry bag, but some of it reached new levels of excellence.
For entertainment, few reporters could equal the New York Herald
Tribune's wisecracking Sports Columnist Red Smith, who dealt
with the convention like an athletic contest, sprinkled his copy
with sports allusions and such gems as his description of Happy
Chandler's campaign grim ("A hawg-jowl smile, meaty and
succulent, with collard greens on the side"), Governor Frank
Clement's coiffure ("He wears a small round part in his dark
hair"), and political pundits ("sports experts with their
shirttails tucked in").

     Though pad-and-pencil newsmen competed briskly with the
electronic press at the scene of the news, each getting
constantly in the other's way, there was actually no competition
between the TV screen and the printed word. They supplemented
each other. When it came to speed and high fidelity to the news
at the instant it was breaking, TV was in a class of its own.
By the same token, for those who could not spend hours before
a TV screen or who wanted the story rounded up and interpreted,
readable at their own pace and convenience (and available for
future reference), the printed page was worth a thousand TV
pictures.


The Biggest Studio

     TV went to Chicago armed with better makeup artists,
nattier dress and more fancy electronic gadgets than ever
before. The show hardly lived up to its lavish pressagentry, but
TV provided the nation with the most comprehensive coverage ever
accorded a national political convention. The TV was
occasionally halting, windy and inaccurate, but it had its
moments of high drama. More important, it was always there.
Creepie-peepies and walkie-talkies manned by hard-running TV
reporters -- notably ABC's Ed Morgan, CBS's Dick Hottelet, NBC's
Merrill Mueller -- peered, poked and pried into the remotest
nooks of hotel rooms, train stations, nightclubs, and the
convention hall itself.

     The three major networks called out their stables of old,
reliable stars, and laid on a couple of new ones. CBS's veteran
Walter Cronkite, working his familiar anchor spot, gave the
most informed, alert and consistently lucid commentary, held up
best under the week's strain. His biggest coup: getting Ave
Harriman inside the fishbowl to exchange blessings with Estes
Kefauver on a split-screen hookup (denounced as "electronic
fakery" by rival ABC). CBS's seasoned twosome of Ed Murrow and
Eric Severeid was seen only fleetingly, bantering the big
picture with the casualness of network executives at a ball
game.

     Runners-up in the honors department: NBC's able Chet
Huntley and young (36), deadpan David Brinkley, who this year
teamed up for the first time to add zest and drollery -- a rare
convention commodity -- to the otherwise dull goings-on.
Occasionally this new NBC team even had the edge on the
traditionally good CBS reporting staff.

     ABC's anchorman, John (What's My Line?) Daly, made a
virtue out of his chain's relative poverty (less gadgetry,
smaller staff) by sticking with the action on the platform while
the other webs cast about for sideshow pickups. Daly was the
only anchorman who could actually see the convention from his
box (the others watched it over monitor screens). ABC highlight:
bulldogging Martin Agronsky corralling top delegates for debate,
and consistently managing to make sense out of them.

     Trivia & Fluff. As always, the ubiquitous TV reporters
caught some memorable glimpses: the unchivalrous disinterest of
newspaper-reading delegates on ladies' day; NBC's pickup of the
small but illuminating drama of Adlai Stevenson's reception for
Mrs. Roosevelt; Bess Truman, behind dark glasses, nudging Harry
in the ribs for speaking out of turn; bottle-bald Sam Rayburn
(who did not submit to a dulling topsoil application of orange
powder this time, as he did the last) threatening to shoot an
admonishing finger right through the little glass screens in
U.S. living rooms; the grin spreading across H. V. Kaltenborn's
face as he watched Harry Truman (on film) impersonate
Kaltenborn's clipped commentary in the 1948 elections (later,
at Perle Mesta's wingding, Kaltenborn did an impersonation of
Truman impersonating Kaltenborn).

     The relentless camera magnified the trivia and underlined
the fluffs, caught the convention's heights and hollows -- and
its occasional signs of petulance and flippancy -- Truman
dressing down a reporter who was badgering him for an interview;
Tennessee's Governor Clement Butler boiling mad over CBS's
failure to run a documentary film.

     TV's impact on the convention was emphasized from the
start, when Paul Butler surprised everybody by banging the gavel
on time. And in a sense, TV itself could be blamed for much of
the tedium. Almost every speaker, painfully conscious' of the
camera's eye, addressed himself to "you who are watching TV."
The galluses, the sweat, the unguarded gestures, the open shirts
and bold-patterned ties were gone for good.

     But there were enough human bloopers to make up for the
lack of old-fashioned fun. John Daly reported: "Mr. Rostrum
stands in recess." Will Rogers Jr. (CBS) wound up a Stevenson
interview with "Thank you very much, Governor Harriman"
(Retorted Adlai: "Goodbye, Dave Garroway!"). Crooner Johnny
Desmond muffed the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, and NBC's
Monitor introduced Mrs. Roosevelt as "Eleanor Stevenson."

     Legs Crossed, Jackets Buttoned. Network rivalry hit a new
peak. CBS posted a sign for its staffers: "Under no
circumstances are you to patronize the NBC cafeteria." TV
Reporter Vince Garrity caused an outraged flurry by flaunting
ABC lapel pins in range of rival cameras. NBC went so far as to
hire a professional lip reader to try to catch out-of-reach
conversation, and ABC issued instructions to its staff: "Be sure
when you are on camera, that you sit up straight, have your legs
crossed modestly, and your jacket buttoned."

     The biggest problem was getting cameras into the right
place at the right time. Sometimes the sheer magnitude of the
new gadgets delayed the news. One NBC man got stuck on top of
a 70-foot "hi-reach" camera and was forgotten. Twelve ABC men
were wedged between electronic gear in a tiny booth until
someone called a locksmith. Larry (Meet the Press) Spivak had
to be rushed to a doctor to have a small speaker plug removed
from his ear. Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson got hopping mad at
CBS for "wrecking" his hotel suite, and no one could stand to
look at NBC's five simultaneous pictures for very long.

     But overall, the networks did a fascinating job of
hustling televiewers inside their biggest studio. To make things
easier, they superimposed arrows and circles on the screen to
single out key figures. NBC commentators loomed into view in the
shape of triangles, sometimes peeped through keyholes. But as
ABC's debearded (for TV) John Vandercook mused: "Sometimes I
think we suffer from embarrassment of riches."