Evening star., 1925-11-01
HAND-OUT SYSTEM GIVES
i. S. NEWS CENSORSHIP
Saves Departments Lots of Embarrass-
ment, and Reporters Feet No Longer
Go Flat, But Has Its Evils, Too.

partment is to walt for the hand-out,
and / am told that a pair Of shoes
will last such men for years.
Another evil of this system is that
our Government is gradually coming
to assume a sort of censorship over
the press which allows it to feed the
ought to read, and carefully forget
some other news which would,
ting some other news which would
be quite as interesting, but maybe not
so f1attering. A good many Of the
Government departments now have
strict orders against allowing any of
their employees to talk to newspaper
men. There are two sides to this
matter. Of course. One Is that 1t IS
close to a necessity that some type of
muzzle should be placed upon the
talkative Toms. Dicks and Harrys one
is liable to find in any Government
department. If everybody who thought
he had something TO say about run
ming the Government was allowed to
tell it to the newspapers, there is no
safe prediction of what Washington
would be like inside of week or ten
days. Everybody in Congress, for in
stance, would be on an investigating
committee.
Hides Many Blunders.
"On the other hand, there are lot
of heads of bureaus and divisions who
know what they are talking about and
when to talk about it, and there is
danger of getting them so scared up
that they won't say anything except
with the Secretarys permission-and
then only to the Department. press
agent. This makes II SO that when
the department makes blunder or.
as you would say it, pulls a boner,'
the matter can very easily be hushed
up by not saying anything about it,
and the newspapers are powerless TO
pry II out because everybody with
knowledge to talk is too scared TO
open his mouth. So unless a hand-out
comes through on the subject there's
not much to do except sit around and
hope.
why. can remember when I was
covering a department as a boy re
porter / used to have lot of friends
who'd tip me off to what was going
on. There weren't SO many Govern
ment departments in those days and
We used to try to get a scoop on an
annual report. An annual report was
big news 20 or 80 years ago. Today
it's just another hand-out for a re
porter to rewrite and paste up. Time
was, as / was saying, when l used to
have a lot of friends in a Government
department, and one day one Of them
slipped me a copy of the Secretary's
I
| lease date in those days, and you just
printed what you got when you got It.
Well, my friend slipped me this an
nual report and made me swear /
| wouldn't tell anybody where l got It.
and made me promise l wouldn't use
it without the Secretarys permission.
So | got it and went into the SeCrc-
tary's office and said, Mr.. Secretary,
can | use this report Of yours?'
And the Secretary said, Sure, so
ahead and use it
Now It's Come to This.
$50 1 ran back to the Office and we
| printed six columns on it and nobody
| else had a line. The boss gave me a
raise in salary for SCooping the New
| York papers. But what does your
| city editor say when you hand him an
annual report these days? He looks
up and says, 'When's it released?' and
you tell him and he says, 'Cutterhell
| OUTFIT and putitinerfile.'
Yes, this hand-out business is
! amounting TO censorship that is TAX
! ing all the joy out of a reporters life.
/ and constitutes, to my mind, one Of
| the grave dangers that I'm afraid
| some Congressman is going TO want to
! investigate one of these days soon.
| And it is spreading. You can't get a
| man to say what he thinks OF the
| weather these days, provided he's a
| public man. without his wanting To
| get out a hand-out on the subject.
| Wouldn't surprise me any day TO hear
| the Police Department has put it into
practice, and when there's a big fire
or murder the police reporter will
| telephone his city editor and say he
! understands there's something going
| on In town somewhere, but he thinks
| it'll be couple Of hours before the
| police can get out a hand-out."