'Kennedy Flatters For News Control'

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30065, 25 February 1963, Page 11

'Kennedy Flatters For News Control'

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24. A senior Washington correspondent said today that President Kennedy flatters reporters, commentators and editors as a means of managing news and is more cynical, bold and subtle in his control than any President before him. Mr Arthur Knock, chiefs of the “New York Times' ’ Washington bureau for the last 21 yews, in an article for

“Fortune” magazine, wrote: “A news management policy not only exists but, fo the form of direct and deliberate action, has been enforced more cynically and boldly than by any previous Administration in a period when foe United States was not in * waT _■ visible means of regression from the verge of war. “In the fortn of indirect but equally deliberate action, the policy has been much move effective then direct action in colouring the several facets of public taformation. because it has been employed with subtlety and imagination for which there is no historic parallel known to me." ; Mr Krock said one principal form of She indirect t management was “social : flattery of Washington re-

porters and commentators.” He said Mir Kennedy and his AdmdnMration gave* the “treatment” to many more reporters than any previous **■ *-* “In the new Administration, the quotable exclusive interview has ceased to be a rarity,” Mr Knock said. “But Mr Kennedy prefers the intimate background briefings of journalists, and their pubMabera, on a large scale, from wtrich members emerge in a state of protracted enchantment evoked by the Presidents charm and the awesome aura of his office. "The success of his efforts is attested by a continentwide glow in news reporting, editorialising, and comment which otherwise might register the lower temperature of impersonal objectivity,•Vhe said.