The First Amendment; Philip Horton

The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media and I think 70s produced by WGBH radio Boston in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Gruber. I'm delighted to have as my guest for this program Philip Orton. Philip Orton is probably better known to you than you think because for 18 years he was one of the editors indeed a founding editor of that remarkable magazine The Reporter magazine which did so much to influence journalism in journalistic history and our appreciation of American politics beginning with its founding in 1909. He's also. The author of one of the best biographies of Hart Crane the poet which has been very well reviewed and is in numerous editions. Philip Orton started out by teaching at Harvard and during World War Two worked in the

intelligence services of the United States as an important person in both London and Paris. One of his deputies was Arthur Schlesinger Jr. a former guest on this program. In his time as editor of the reporter he also carried out some of the lessons he learned in a hectic year as associate editor of foreign news of Time magazine. Right after the war after his years at the reporter and the collapse of the reporter again you may remember that access Callie was one of the. Key people funding the reporter and working with it. Scully had been an anti Mussolini person smuggled out of Italy and was a leading light. After that Philip Orton ran a Ford project on urban and minority reporting which was one of the first new service services and then went on to be the director of the Edward R. Murrow center of public diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law in diplomacy of

toughs. Philip Orton May I first ask you as a as an old reader of the Reporter magazine. Tell us about the early years of that magazine and some of the characteristics of it. Yes I think it might be interesting very true. I mention the basic rationale of the magazine and why I joined it and resigned from time to do so. During the years I was in Europe during the war and after the war reading American magazines at that distance I became aware of what seemed a major gap. In the magazine world in this country. They didn't seem to be any magazine between the left wing liberal left wing like The New Republic in the nation and TIME magazine and Newsweek. And if you go back in your mind I think you'll agree that Mr. Big gap there as the Atlantic occasionally ran things but they were what I call the anthology

magazine short stories poems this that you have that. But there's nothing in between those two extremes. And it seemed to me that the way the world was going in the post-war years the enormously important role that the U.S. was obviously slated to play in the post-war world there was going to be a very important opening of a new magazine. When I returned to this country I left the government during a time as you said and I began to hear about the plans that Max asked Lee was Can solving with his various friends about including our friend author Shlaes again Scotty Reston and others. Eventually Arthur approached me to be introduced to Max. At first I didn't want to join the magazine they just had one dummy issue out which was sort of disastrous. But then after some talks with Ask Lee I could see that he was really aiming at the

same goal to fill that gap. That was when I resided in time and take it. And I think I can say that the magazine fulfilled my hope an expectation in that sense. Indeed today I run into people all over the country who say that that gap has been emptied ever since the reporter folded. Well when when you talk about that gap I was reminded of the fact that it was one of the first magazines to take a strong stand on Joseph R. McCarthy. Yes and that was very exciting period at the reporter. We of course thought of ourselves as liberals but certainly middle of the road arrows or what didn't we sometimes thought of ourselves as what's called liberal in European sense. So we distinguish ourselves from the left wing liberal elements in this country. Nonetheless we're called a pinko magazine when we first started I think largely because we did attack McCarthy very early on and we ran I don't know how many

articles. About one or another aspect of it is activity. When I'm Conan shine which I asked Dick revere the New Yorker to do for us and beautiful PS I did one myself on the way they had infiltrated the Voice of America. I had one very amusing experience there as a writer. At that time by the way was quite well known now I believe Ladislaus farrago. Yes who's written about secret service work and so on. Yes that's his big special you. During the war years he had been a neighbor of somehow tax and naval intelligence. He came into my office one day with the Daily News building then. And he in effect suggested he become a double agent on the McCarthy subject because he had been approached by Conan shine McCarthys to young women to serve as a kind of specialty specialist an anti-communist.

Now this was true of a lot of Eastern Europeans at that time if you remember they were being hired by government and radio regularly loaned you know by as anti-communist specialist right. And so Fargo was much amused. Except that Dabney came to me and said he liked the double agent effect and he would give me reports confidential reports of the meetings up in the walled off towers where young David shine maintain and maintained a rather elaborate apartment. That's just one little sidelight but it was an exciting period been in. Well now when you said that you filled the gap are you including the Saturday Review. Or do am I thinking of the Saturday Review a little bit later when cousins went off on these these tangents which were tremendously interesting and very politically effective but he was alone there for a while was not after the reporter magazine or no there was about to I think is more or less concurrent. But in my own thinking and rightly or wrongly fairly or not I did not

look on the sad review as the kind having the kind of substance and focus and high level quality that you were a political I guess a lot of the Yes you yes without as you say without the literary pretensions that we do have we established a back of the book section in which we did review books and so on even occasionally a short story. But that was by play really essentially the magazine was a political magazine with a very heavy emphasis on international affairs. But also very good in all the what we thought were all the high spots and problems of domestic politics. This is a tough question but if looking back in those years and let's say you're at your desk at the reporter and somebody come up and say to you Look the reporter is a national magazine this new newspaper that Ralph Ingersoll is working on. PM is coming out as a very innovative Journal and is a kind of an experiment in New York. What kind of thinking goes into p.m. that's coincidental with the

reporter is there any kind of a connection. Or you know they're just both innovative at the time. I think probably both innovative and not much otherwise probably. PM after all was a New York paper. Yes. You know it's it was it was far to the left of the report a good deal farther to the left. We really were middle of the road right straight through. But there was no I mean when they invaded years we were accused On the contrary particularly because of the Vietnam War and the policy the reporter supporting the war pretty late in the day. Then of course we are under attack as well for being hawks but of course there was no middle of that road in those years when the reporter now. Just when you said that you something like a European liberals you meant that some Europeans call themselves socialist We always thought that they were communists when they use the word social when I said European liberals are saying the Liberal Party in England

translated in American terms you call it a conservative liberal. You know I wish you hadn't said that though because the Liberal Party in England is coming awfully close to extinction. Well water has died and they're not dead. So there's there's very little hope for that kind of approach or at the moment. I should say that one of the another very exciting episode at the reporter chapter if you will that also earned us the this too was during the McCarthy years so that again it added to the mistaken image that we are somehow very left as was the big part feature that we ran on the China lobby. This was one of my own major undertaking when after Chiang Kai shek very had on the whole the whole group in the United States who was to appoint all the senators Yeah. And that was a very exciting episode. You know the Chinese embassy by the way. It was ordered by on my trunk I checked to buy up copies of the report

and burn them and I had a call after the first issue with the first part of the story came out I had a call from companies in Washington complete a newsletter I might never met never knew and he said Do you know what's happening here. He said the burning in your new issue that's on the stand. He said Do you have a bureau down and I said yes we have a small bureau. Well he said You better get the man out and check on this. I did and it was true and also buying it up New York because my reaction would have been that regardless of the issue to have all the copies printed to media they couldn't rush to the new status and notify the Chinese Embassy that they could buy what was a 25 cents a copy it was I can't remember right that I would have made enough to keep it going for years. To change the subject a little bit on your work after that you you did a food project and were working as the director creator of urban minority reporting and whether to put a recone new service.

No I was that was one of the interesting and challenging things about it. A relation between the black and Puerto Rican communities in New York was not good at that time. Quite the contrary and I had once I made up my mind that we ought to try to establish minority new service. I thought why not go the extra step and try to make it a black and Puerto Rican. And I was successful in doing that but I ended up with about I think 10 young people men and women both blacks and Puerto Ricans some had some experience in journalism some had none. We conducted a dry run for about nine months and every day they would file their stories from the ghetto neighborhoods in New York and I would deliver the their copy dry run copy to the person that prospective clients CBS Radio's NBC all the radio networks and television networks a New York Times in the post

etc. so they became familiar and then I'd get together with the editors and those organizations and let them critique the stories. So that at the end of the nine month period when we were ready to offer the service we had a lot of good many takers I think all the major news organizations subscribed and they even tried to use a copy but quite often they would not give the CNS by lag which irritated our reporters a great deal. Well they work so hard. It was one of the better things to do and of course it is still a good thing to do. You know it's one of those areas that we have not done enough we all know has a lot to be done right. The Institute for democratic communication is in the process of doing a major book on minorities in the media writer and let me hear that. We think it's we think as you did then and now. Could I move on to you at the Mara center as director and in particular your

interest in third world first world relationships or the world of high technology and low technology nations sometimes called the north south debate. And Philip Orton you you were instrumental in getting these two groups together in New York to discuss it. About two years ago and then last April at Cairo I was delighted to be there to join in with that group. And you are now about to do something again innovative which seems to be the mark of your career. Perhaps you go over that. Yes really I became interested in is this whole set of issues revolving around the complaint of the third world against the West and news media in 76 I think yes it was before the Nairobi you know ask those handling and that led me to set up the New York conference organized that we had a good many third world news

leaders there and that was judged successful enough to warrant a follow up that led to the Cairo conference which is a still bigger one with even more third world representation. There's a book coming out from Prager's is just about out now. I'm sorry to say I was very delayed these are the Collected papers The New York conference. But it's a good book to have in the market and have available for us to go to it in title it's called the same title as the conference Third World and press freedom. I asked John Chancellor to do a kind of introduction I did a forward in all the papers are there about 16 of them I think it's the director of town drug agency from Nigeria. The news director of a Nigerian broadcasting guy wowed the chairman of the Middle East news agency they all contributed papers. So it's a very nice cross-section of world opinion mingled with that of American news people. Executives.

In any event the Cairo conference is you know Bernie was a very successful one I believe a little bit of time go by and then I met with my planning committee and we felt that a third large conference was not in order in the sense that we were afraid we might just be repeating covering the same ground we felt was much more important given the nature of the tensions between the Third World and the Bantu around the set of issues to die to do something very practical. You know that was the demand of the Third World that it was a political show up saying Tell us what you're going to do. And ultimately we have to say what we're going to do. More and more they were saying that and of course you couldn't deny them. The point they were making and of course the major complaint for those who are not keeping up with the subject is that their new services were dominated by what came out of Associated Press United Press a Dyche of an old BBC

that sort of thing. Without enough influence of their own one way flow on with a one way flow and according to them distorted or unfair at least. And I think that in the course of the New York conference some of the top leaders the American press organizations were at New York being very skeptical minded towards a constant time it was over they began to see that there were certain justifications for the complaints mingled with a great deal of misapprehension. In any event. Planning Committee felt this way after Cairo we met not too long ago in New York and it was my feeling that we shouldn't have a third one big conference so we ended up deciding to have a feasibility study. The proposal made at Cairo first adumbrate it did New York conference by Raja Terry and in a paper that I had commissioned Raja Tarion is the former. It is chief editor in chief of UPI United Press International and a very knowledgeable

man who's now Terina of journalism in California and he came up with a plan to establish a mechanism you want tell us a little about the mechanism. Yes he calls it a modern national news agency to be more specific it is really a first third no second world nations visit could I put in a little parenthesis there. First world is us and the British an all liberal European the Americans and the Japanese that have a democratic ideology in one form or another. Second world is the countries the Soviets and the communist bloc that we consider do not have a basically democratic ideology and thirdly a form of government and thirdly the developing states form a colonial in the main that go into the name of third world. That's correct. End of Prince Raja Herring's idea.

It was a very exciting one. Some people thought it was a little bit of pie in the sky but it is Cairo papers started out in quite a bit of detail his very briefly in visage a directorate of maybe 10 or 15 First and Third World Press leaders then a an actor or managing editor and staff perhaps anywhere from 10 to 20 but probably starting with 10 reporters again First and Third World reporters who would be assigned on loan by their press organizations who would maintain their salaries. And this agency a new agency would specialize be devoted only to develop a news. It would not attempt to cover the big political stories and so on it would be because as you know that there's a great saw a great point of a complaint among the Western media do not report what's going on in these countries in terms of economic and social

development. And true enough they don't do very much of that. It's not as much as they might. So there's agents who would be devoted exclusively to that kind of news and this meeting that you're having is mostly of the directors of the great new services of the United States or other countries as well. AP Associated Press UPI in on the feasibility study. We're inviting France Press the DPA the datcha press the German service tried to present good writers and then from the Third World Of course we can invite all we want to keep it a relatively small group in order to really make some headway. Probably about seven or eight of the news agency heads including go OD from Middle East News Agency. We want the Indians would like to come and bite the Nigerians. The Kenyans probably Latin-American we want to keep the group probably not more than twenty four or five.

Now it will if it works it will be the most crucial meeting held since Nairobi 976 even though it's a small meeting because there's been a lot of complaints and defenses hurled back and forth by both sides but no real mechanism other than the third world group operating a news agency. You know the nonaligned pool in Yugoslavia. Now so we have been aloof but I think it's shows that we recognize that their complaints have literally as you said yes in the nonaligned pool as you know Bernie is a useful thing for the nonaligned countries to have done but it's the central fault is that it's a poor is not an independent agency. The news agencies of the third world put file in their reports to us at a point we turned the US live agency which then distributes. But these are largely government handouts because most of the news agencies of the developing

countries are under usually under complete control or largely complete control of the government. So that from the Western viewpoint this is no great help. And actually if they had of conjugated say has admitted that his own disappointment in the quality of material coming into the nonaligned pool and it is not very impressive. Well my own feeling is that for the first time you will be saying to the Third World where something like this we're willing to put up the money through the news agencies we're willing to set up the service and in effect what we're saying is when you were reasonable you were right when you when you were exaggerated we objected to your exaggerations. But we're saying that democracy and the Democratic news ideal and the search for world news the way we have it in some form applies to you and you're just as democratic as we

are and there's no reason to be to feel outside of the club. We're asking you to join the club. Is that a fair statement. Yes. I should emphasize that is part of that Aaron's idea which I agree with completely that they won't have. Anything to do with it. The funding will be apart from any control they have nothing to do with that right but there they will be expected to contribute to the funding. They will contribute not only bodies in the sense of reporters right but they will contribute to the fine and what proportion of the financing do you expect to get from him. Well I would say not very much from that there's going to be like it'll be like the world supporting the UN with the American contribution being the greatest. The I think about the money obviously would have to come from Europe Japan and United States. Now the Japanese are terribly interested aren't thing they're beginning to get interested. They're a little bit late coming in. Partly our fault because they were not at the New York conference. They were at Cairo but I think from now on they're weak in more

the. The. The relevance of this to the Japanese very great because they have to keep new new alliances going with third world they're absolutely dependent for resources upon third world and very much so. And I've worked a lot as you know with the Japanese on communications USA and communications and I have the impression that while the Japanese are very much aware of that when it comes to actually coming to grips with third world problem problems and establishing close working relations they have not been all that successful. Well coming to grips the way Americans like to come to grips is not especially a Japanese character is not very very different style of behavior. He is not coming to grips always means that you can get out of it you know. Well I think it's just absolutely splendid now.

After that do you have any personal plans that you've got on the back burner. No I don't think there is one other project that I have agreed to tackle this year in my new capacities. Professor Emeritus and special consultant to the Mars center. That is that Toyota anniversary fund awarded the Mars center a grant to conduct a three day symposium of communication leaders from the U.S. and Japan to examine a whole set of problems across the board that affect not only the bilateral U.S. Tapan relationship but also the third world relationship respectively with U.S. and Japan. The two countries are both enormously active in Southeast Asia and other developing countries. Again their style of operation is enormously different. The perceptions and images that the third world say Southeast Asia has of U.S. and Japan presence in Southeast Asia are very different.

This all all of these factors. Aside from being important in themselves having a side effect on us bilateral Japanese relations so that the idea was to get a broad spectrum of communication exactly as including both the technological people 80:20 people like that. Well I think it's splendid you know as well as you have gone over your work and your interests from from the time that you were in college and you did that biography at the age tender age of hard grain of 25 years of age. It seems to me that it's it's a career of constant leadership. I don't want to throw bouquets your way but leadership of the press that most newspaper men and magazine men steer away from they usually do exactly what the press encourages at any given time. In my view you have tried to find out what the press should be doing at any given

time. Well I don't know about leadership Bernie but I suppose it's true that I have a passion for experiment. Well you weren't too far behind. It's been fun though it had been a lot of I mean is this in your own personal characteristic that you sort of like this. Yes I'm doing Larry Altman. You know if you if you were to write. A line or two that said gee I'd like to deal with this next subject. When I went through everything else what would the subject be. I won't even guess when you won't even get well. As a last tribute to your tribute hour I'm reminded of sonar saddos line in on the town. Do you remember New York New York it's a hell of a town the Bronx is up in the batteries down in the people travel in a hole in the ground New York New York it's a hell of a group. It's been an absolute delight having you feel important for this edition. Bernard Ruben thank you very much. The First Amendment and a free people weekly examination of civil liberties in the media. Even

1970 the program was produced in cooperation with the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University. Why didn't you GBH radio Boston which is solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.