4
Wednesday, March 17. 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
'North Vietnam. James.'
The Press and the War
According to the Gallup Poll, seven out of 10 americans don't believe what the government is doing.
The government, in turn, wonders why this is so, of course; but they need not look beyond their own
the almost unprecedented difficulties being encountered by war correspondents in covering the war.
—constantly changing military objectives
—criticism by government spokesman when the correspondents report defeats
—President Nicken's ambiguous statements on American policy in Indochina
These factors are traceable not to a dangerous new advent of neoislolism but to the government's treatment of the war effort as it appears to the American public.
There have been restrictions placed on news coverage in every American war, but the strange nature of the Vietnamese conflict, and the distressing attempts to control the news from Southeast Asia combine to make the duty of the U.S. press in reporting the war double difficult.
Correspondents have found that when the war effort is going badly for the U.S. restrictions are most strongly convened. Conversely, when things go well for the U.S., they make every effort to display the fruits of victory.
At the beginning of the Laos operation, the U.S. Command refused to let newsmen ride on American-planted helicopters. Vigorous protest to this rule was common in the helicopter pilots are still prohibited from taking to correspondents. This prohibition isn't effective of course, and pilots and their crewmen talk freely, if anonymously, to newsman. But there are still the most important sorts of generals to shut off the flow of information.
1966. Wes Gallagher of the Associated Press wrote, "Criticism of the press by government rises
in direct proportion to the amount of adverse news printed which may not be in line with government
This is so today, as well, as the public hears the Pentagon complaining periodically that newsmen are focusing on defeats rather than successes. This comes from the government agency that is making the correspondent's job in Vietnam so difficult in the first place.
The stated military objective of the Laotian campaign has varied with the relative successes and defeats of the South Vietnamese army. Different spokesmen have set forth varying interpretations of the Laotian invasion, further confusing the American public. The specific objectives vacillate from cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail to destroying the city of Saigon to destroying North Vietnam stockpiles of supplies to thwarting enemy plans to conquer the northern provinces of South Vietnam. These have all been cited in a general way, by various spokesmen as the major objective of the campaign.
President Nixon has not added attempts to clarify and define the extent of the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia. He does not say whether the United States is committed to preventing any of the Laos and South Vietnam or whether the United States is committed to preventing at any cost Communist control of these countries. Will the orderly withdrawal of American troops continue at any cost, regardless of the final outcome in these countries?
As a result of ambiguous presidential statements, there is also doubt about the U. role in the event of an invasion of North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese. And there linger the spectre of an openended troop presence in Asia while we await the American prisoner of war by North Vietnam.
Doubt and confusion have thus found fertile ground in America's tragic involvement in Asia. And the roots of doubt and confusion lead not from the people bat from the government itself.
—Bob Womack
The Lighter Side
Watt's the Matter With Us?
WASHINGTON  (UPI) -- In reviewing the problems of the over-developed areas of the world, I recently pointed out that the people in these regions have been fortunately dependent on electricity.
Even such elementary devices as fingernail files and sewing scissors have been electrified, the result being a massive power drain that threatens to exceed productive capacity.
Since a power failure would create utter chaos, I proposed United Nations recruit advisers to understand the natures of the over-developed areas how to perform such simple tasks as heating eggs or removing lint from clothes without turning on the current.
I still believe such a program is vitally needed, but I now see it would have to be handled with great tact and finesse to avoid offending the people it was designed to help.
"We Northasterners may be over-developed," he wrote, "but that doesn't mean we don't have to work with you middling doodlers will learn to solve the power shortage problem without outside help.
"It was American technology that got us into this mess, and American technology can get us
As an example of how technology can be used for that purpose, he cited a phonograph record titled "Shuggie's Old Time Dee-Di-Lee-Leet-Deet Slide Boogie."
The song was recorded in stereo on unbreakable, flexible vinyl at 33 RPM's, which is the modern, bi-fi method. But, academics have found that "electronically reprocessed to recreate an old scratch record."
"If electronics can do it, there is no reason why other types of technology can't make similar devices and revert breakthroughs."
"Eventually, we'll be able to pull ourselves down by our own bootstraps."
EDITOR'S COLUMN
ST. LOUIS—Past the hush, modern, deluxe airline lies an old gravelage with small stone markers. A super jet heading for the landing strip passed over the car and sink slowly over the gravelage; into the small markers.
Talkin' Interstate 70 Blues
Spring break, even when it's in the winter, is a time for students to explore, travel and, just as Easy Rider did, look for America. I did that and along the way east on Interstate 70 jotted down some notes on the scenery.
By GALEN BLAND
St. Louis is a brown brick town. From the interstate, stretching on into the town, the brown brick is everywhere, houses, crumbling houses and old office buildings play in the street in the spewing water of a fire hydrant.
By the Mississippi the great arch shines in the sun. A flock of tourists is always surrounding the base of the arch—taking pictures and straining necks. The arch is not brown brick.
EAST ST. LOUIS-The first thing you see in the bridge over the Mississippi are crumbling wooden houses, sprawling across the horizon. Two black boys play in the rubble of a burned-out house. Just past the old houses, jutting above the red shingled roofs, the sign of a Holiday Inn can be seen.
At the College Cafe Big Momma waits on tables, cooks the food and keeps her daughters from cussing. The jukebox belts out country and western tunes and it's easy to think of "Five Easy Pieces."
Two of her daughters sit by the jukebox and talk about their mother to their mother. "I keep hearin' big. Big Momma's goums slap me and big Momma's goums slap her. I merge." Justa soon she did and got it over, with sometimes.
Does your cottage cheese come with tomatoes? I ask.
You should asked if we had cottage cheese. "Big"
Yes, it does.
Big Momma is offended. "I ain't said that I was gonna slap nobody . . . but if I will want to me,"
"I had Momma hold $16 for me so I wouldn't spend it. Good thing she did cause the rent's not due and I need one."
Her other daughter is on another plane of thought.
I walk to the counter where Big Momma is figuring out the price. A tattoon on her arm says "good."
GREENFIELD, Ind.-James Whitcomb Riley, a poet who wrote homey poems, was born here. Snow is falling harder and the roads are slick, so we are forced to spend the night here.
"Your's is $2,15, lover . . . and big momma wanta thank you." Outside, snow is falling on East St. Louis
The motel is the Liberty Motel. They give you a free newspaper when you register, and suggestions on where to eat. A bumper sticker on a car at the Angus Inn says, "I'll be here if you're in trouble." The sign says this is the birthplace of a poet.
WHEELING, W. Va.—No sign welcomes the traveler to West Virginia—only the end of the interstate and the old wooden frame houses that hang on the mountainsides. They are busily working on the freeway. Howard Johnson doesn't have a restaurant here and neither does Colonel Sanders. A few miles later the interstate resumes and a sign welcomes you to Pennsylvania. It is good not to look too hard at Wheeling, and forget it when you're through it.
The Voice of the Nation
The voice rambles across the airways and into the antenna and through the speakers and into your head. The voice varies little, but it is telling you how things are. Page two.
How the Russians are getting ahead of us and, listen to Paul Harvey, we can't be fat cats. And the voice never changes—it always is selling—which it speaks of the world. That's why she's putting a weight-levying candy. The voice never changes.
CATONSVILLE, Md. — It was two years ago that Father Berrigan and eight pals broke into the Selective Service offices in this Baltimore suburb and burned half of the records.
Berrigan is now in jail and has written a play, "The Catonsville Nine." The records-burning party brought
national attention to Catonsville but, said a native son, "it wasn't a big deal until it hit the papers."
The native and I drive down the main street. "The Draft Board used to be there," he said, pointing to a white building. "It's the Knights of Columbus building. They left back doors and took the records. The old ladies who were around here," I was driving by here and there was a whole bunch of people out back but you couldn't see much from the street."
He was in high school when the suburb gained national publicity. "I guess they got their point across," he said, "he's
BALTIMORE—Fort McHenry, where the "Sta-
Spangled Banner" was written, is the main tourist attraction. The fort, standing guard on the Chesapeake Bay, was named after the fort (the fort has been restored; the flag is in Washington):
The only trouble is getting out to the bay. You have to cross the "bad part of town." The streets narrow and all the houses are the same. Two steps up, a crumbling house is the one. The houses stretch for as far as the eye can see.
The sun beats down on a sandlot baseball game. It is a real sandstall. Some of the rocks are bigger than the sand.
A junk dealer yells at his horse. The cart is loaded with old chairs and mattresses that people have thrown away. The junk dealer makes his living selling the throw away stuff. His horse won't move. It coughs and drools on the street. The junk dealer yells and the horse begins to move. Baltimore is a city by the bay.
WASHINGTON—The wind was cold. John F. Kennedy's grave looked much different from when I had been there last, seven years ago. A stone wall circles his grave.
Words from his famous speeches are engraved on the stone.
Off to the side a small white cross marks another grave. I asked a uniformed guard whose grave it was.
That's Robert Kennedy's grave, he said. The winc was cold on the hill in Arlington.
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must meet requirements in the town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
LETTERS Praise for Elections, OD
To the Editor:
Planning and executing the spring student election is not a "nightbefore" activity. It takes months of planning by people other than the Student Senate Elections Committee members. A great many of these individuals are quite foreign to student government. Frank Owen spent many of his valuable hours with us arranging the financial resources for our students, including the printer's plant, worked many long nights to give our ballots to us on time. Most of all, however, we cannot praise too high the many people at the computation center without whom we have been quite lost. Nancy Dale, Joe Veros, Gary Cook, Bob Keller, Rich Portenuele, Stan Burk, Mark Feimberg, and Bill Stahl all contributed many overtime hours for which their compensation was only our gratitude. Their work, however, is not yet complete. The student government committee has so far reflected so that in future elections this task will be less than an ordeal. To all these students we offer our utmost thanks and best wishes.
John Friedman
John Friedman for the Student Election Committee
To the Editor:
There have been a number of comments against the Oread Daily it this column recently, but Craig Heatwolfe's letter to the editor (published March 4) strikes me as an absurd attack on the right of free speech.
Hentwale says the OD is guilty of "mental pollution" and likens the editors of "questionable news items and opinions" to "people who toss the truth."
The implications of calling the OD pollution scares me. Should efforts be made to curb such pollution? Just what is there about the OD that makes it a mental pollutant? Is it because the opinions presented are inaccurate or misleading in our news and opinion have to be categorized so that it is simple and neat?
But let's go one step further in questioning the views of Mr. Heatwalt. His last paragraph hints that he feels such a "mind pollution" (brain police anyone?) is indicative of a community with a "sad ... intellectual environment." Perhaps Mr. Heatwalt does not realize that reading a newspaper does not indicate total agreement. Indeed, in such as purses, it is necessary to hold all news items and opinions as "questionable." Does Mr. Heatwalt want a dictator to tell him the "way it is" so that he can eliminate the污染 from his mind?
In my estimation, the Oread Daily has made considerable progress in presenting a more realistic point of view. Instead of calling for violence after Vern Milleer's raids, the March 1 edition called for a reassessment of drugs as a basis for a new culture. If the Oread Daily reacts to this by "attacking" the part of the KU community, then I call upon Mr. Heathcote to understand and diagnose the disease, not attack the symptom.
Jim Eshelman Clinton, Mo., junior
Griff & the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff."
Chanute Editor Questions Role of Press in Raids
By TERRY MURPHY Reprinted from the Chanute Tribune
So I came to this town made famous by KU to interview first-hand those who were involved in the raids. Hostility, open and pointed, greeted me when they presented a news media "representative".
LAWRENCE-Reports from reporters who joined Vern Miller's recent raid left me with the feeling that a major element had been left untouched—the part played by the press.
The hostility was not limited to those arrested or searched. Chris was brought up on the privately owned Baismith dormitory at the south edge of the campus, said she didn't want to work with any media representative.
For a starter, she said, there was the photographer from Life magazine who led to her when he met Ms. Earl Mauldin. The KBI agent, Earl Mauldin, told Miss Wright the photograph was with him, which she took to mean he was a photographer. Her actions' actions led her to demand his credentials, and when he lacked them she ordered him to leave. He had already taken pictures by that time, she said.
"The man was arrogant, he displayed pure arrogance," she said; a cold fury fairly oozed forth.
And down in the heart of the so-called hippie colony, there were even harder words for news and television camera screws.
"How the hell would you like it if you were routed out of bed at three in the morning, made to bare-ass naked against the wall while photographers trooped in and out?" The question came from a young Topeka artist who was not charged nor named in court. Regina McCormick pictures and newreels were jaken.
Pictures taken in that apartment house were in the Kansas City papers showing residents of a small town accused "Busted Hippie Pad," was the caption headline. Another caption referred to a "hipster sulking about the lack of ordered rights or privacy" who accused person who is handcuffed and ordered to sit on a bed facing the wall in his underwear. Had he smiled or jeered at the child, he would have been labeled "arrogant hipster!"
The press is reluctant to report the parts played by members of their own trade.
Vern Miller said the press was along to serve as monitors—to assure there would be no brutality. That function would not require cameras in my estimate. In fact, indiscriminate picture-taking could have been counsel to protecting the rights of anyone—accused or not.
Those whose homes were raided saw the press as participants in the attack. As asked, must notification to ask them about camera snaps捕捉 pictures of people not even named on warrants nor later arrested? How does that protect their privacy? They asks answers. I had jigsaw
We seek to be neutral observers and not participants.
Miller had banned cameras, one reporter said. But anyone who watched the television reports saw that they were there, and every paper had photos. If a ban on pictures was intended, Mr. Miller lost control of the press.
It raises questions about the role of the press in a free society when we join raiding teams. Except when they, after it is over, are replaced the police as the most hated by those who were raided.
At 1390 Ohio, the press mingled with shotgun-bearing police and free to take pictures and ask questions of people who had not been seen in the dress, let alone know if they were accused of anything.
Monitors against brutality?
Those who were raided doubt it.
They felt more brutalized by
being photographed partially
dressed than by the actions of the
police.
An All-American college newspaper
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom--UN-4 4810
Business Office--UN-4 4358
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except during examination periods. Mail subscription rate: $4 semester, $1 year. Send resume to KUPSA. All goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of individual beliefs.
Fe re-
rol on
ap we
Oh of
re pe-
re the
Ma ha
ca be
co b
NEWS STAFF
News Adviser . . . Del Brinkman
Editor
Assistant Editor
Campaign Editor
Editorial Staff
News Editors
Sports Editor
Sportz Editor
Makeup Editor
Assistant News Editors
Assistant News Editors
Galeen Bland
Rainbow Staff
Dana Evans
Ted Fliff, Duke Lamphette
Dave Bartel, John Ritter, Nila Walker
Mellissa Johnson
Don Baker
Mike Muffet, Craig Parmer
Kristin Jaffe, Jeff Goudeau
Jim Forbes,
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Adviser Mel Adams
Business Manager
Jim Hsu
Assistant Business Manager
Ashley Young
Assistant Business Manager
Ashley Young
National Advertising Manager
Chris Budker
Climate Advisor
Matthew Perry
Circulation Manager
Mary Procter
David Hack
Jim Hsu
Carol Young
Mike Budker
Mike Budker
Jim Lange
Daniel Procter
Member Associated Collegiate Press
REPRESENTE FOR NATIONAL ADVERTISING BY
National Educational Advertising Services
READER'S DIRECT SALES & SERVICES. INC.
360 Lexington Ave, New York, N.Y. I 10017
Fresh Age Today - M21
Early Adults basketball teams, composed of 600 athletes, gathered in Lawrence for the State High School Basketball Tournament teams formerly in the first round.
50 years Ago Today—1971
Those Were the Days
Dr. F, C. Phog Allen announced that "Dutch" Lonberg would be the next freshman basketball coach.
George Rody was elected the new basketball captain at the
Buttons were distributed to students and faculty who had contributed toward the stadium-union fund drive. Students were required to wear the buttons the next day to get into class.
10 Years Ago Today—1961 A life-time contract for Jack
Glenn Cunningham, a national track star and a KU alumnus, announced he would enter the KU Relaxs.
annual basketball banquet, held at Evereat Cafe.
35 Years Age Today-1938
The Men's Pan Hellenic
University back the dating resolution
already passed by the Men's
Student Council and the Women's
Self Governing Association. The resolution called for equal expense sharing on all dates to better spirit of comradeship between men and women students.
Mitchell, KU head football coach, was approved by the Board of Regents. The contract provided that the only cause for dismissal was a violation of formation or knowledge of violation of conference or national rules.
The NCAA Midwest Basketball
Regions were held in Allen
Farms with Cincinnati
playing Texas Tech and K-State
playing Houston.
Dr. W. Clarke Wescoe, chancellor, asked the Kansas Senate for a faculty retirement program for college colleges equal to that offered by the two universities receiving state aid—Washburn and Wichita.