I have been talking about the process of deciding what goes into a storysetting the facts in the necessary framework of interpretation. There is also the simple question of what is news. The other day Senator Kennedy accused the press of creating the religious issue in the presidential nominating campaign. He argued that hordes of reporters combing through Wisconsin and West Virginia, asking the citizenry whether it would support a Catholic for President and then reporting the existence of religious bloc-voting, had in effect made the citizens think of religion for the first time as a factor in politics. My examples should suggest that these newspaper judgments may involve moral considerations.
Nothing raises more acute problems here than the leak.
The leak is the great weapon of the Washington politician. Most of the stories that are called scoops probably result from a calculation by some official that publication of the material at this time will be advantageous to him and the interests he supports. The idea may be, for example, to start building public support for a program which has not yet won approval within the Administration. Or it may be a leak designed to frighten Congress out of heavy spending by, say, painting a horrifying picture of the gold outflow from this country. But other stories are presented on a silver platter.