Tuesday, November 28, 1967
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
11
Ahlgren says government uses news management
RENO. Nev. — (UPI) — Americans find it difficult to learn what is happening in their government because of news management practiced by government officials and agencies, Frank Ahlgren, editor of the Memphis, Tenn., Commercial Appeal, said Monday.
Ahlgren, in the annual Scripps Lecture in Journalism at the University of Nevada, discussed the "calculated attempts to use the news media for thought control."
"Under a dictatorship such as fascism or communism, the implications are obvious," he said. "But to a frightening and threatening degree, we have the same problem in a nation of free people, free speech and free press."
'Management has increased'
He said examples of news management have increased in the past year. He added news media "keep the vigil, but an inventive bureaucracy also is working overtime on its public relations."
"This is particularly true of the White House and the Defense and State Departments, all of which seem to think that suppression of certain facts detrimental to them will be good for America," Ahlgren said.
He said the "real impetus" for managed news came when former
President Dwight Eisenhower "pulled down the curtain" in the Army-McCarthy investigation. He said Eisenhower excused high officials in the executive branch from testifying publicly on matters the executive considered private domain. The Kennedy administration extended the curb on information, he said.
Johnson, too
He said an example of news management under President Johnson may be a news conference called at such short notice a full number of reporters may not be present. He said this makes it possible for the President to "give a desired slant to statements on which he might be questioned more knowledgeably at a pre-announced session."
Ahlgren said one of his reporters in Vietnam found no censorship and almost no news management on the level of face-to-face news gathering among line troops, although officers may "suggest" coverage of favorable projects. At the higher brass hat level, things were tougher, the reporter said. He said information officers "make it their business to know what writers are pro-policy and those who are taking a negative slant."
Two Kansans listed as casualties
WASHINGTON — (UPI)— The Defense Department included two Kansans in its latest casualty list.
They were Army Pfc, William A. Hawthorne, son of Mr. and Mrs. Billy Hawthorne, Eureka,
Kan., and Staff Sgt. Charles L.
Wilk, husband of Mrs. Barbara
Wilk, of Junction City.
Hawthorne was listed as "missing or dead." Wilk died in hostile action.
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