The Sour Note

CBS preened itself last week on getting Nikita Khrushchev to Face the Nation (TIME, June 10), a television news beat that won front-page headlines, editorial-page applause, and even that rare tribute among broadcasters, the repeated use of CBS's name on NBC broadcasts. There were a few complaints, too, over giving Communism's high priest an opportunity to spin his spiel at 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 Americans. But only one sour note fretted CBS. It came from the White House.

At his press conference. President Eisenhower dismissed the interview as the act of "a commercial firm in this country trying to improve its own commercial standing." The President's criticism jolted newsmen. The TV interview with Khrushchev was obviously enterprising, informative journalism, and in getting it, CBS followed the example of other firms which could just as easily be characterized as commercial. The New York Times recently front-paged an interview with Khrushchev by its managing editor Turner Catledge. At least twice since the war, Hearst newsmen have headlined Moscow interviews, one of them far more tightly tailored to Kremlin preconditions, and the other deemed worthy of a Pulitzer Prize to William Randolph Hearst Jr. and Hearstmen Frank Conniff and Kingsbury Smith. Said Joseph Alsop, who last February interviewed Khrushchev for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate: "Any news-gathering organization has a double duty, to make money for its stockholders, but above all, to present the important facts of the world in which we live to its audience. It seems to me very farfetched to mention the necessarily commercial character of our American news-gathering organizations in connection with a major beat by one of them."

The only direct defense of CBS against the President's comments came not from broadcasters, but from the printing-press journalists. Though it continued to publicize its beat and the considerable praise it elicited, and replied to a Congressional critic, CBS itself made no response to the President's criticism. When some cries arose because the Khrushchev interview had not been followed by a rebuttal, the network obediently scheduled one. That produced more controversy when AFL-CIO President George Meany, scheduled to participate, withdrew after learning that segments of the Khrushchev interview would be re-shown in the course of the program.

The other networks, which, like CBS, constantly demand equal treatment with newspapers and magazines, stayed as silent as CBS. John Daly, ABC's vice president for news, said that he found nothing unsuitable in the White House reaction. Such a demonstration of eggshell caution under fire suggested that TV may be getting no worse than it deserves.

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