The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-12-24

Sor, the late and unlamented Office of Facts and Figures. OFF started
 off on the wrong foot by trying to
 do the job with pamphlets. OWI continued this line until it was dis
 covered that the costs were ex-
 cessive and the results negligible be-
 cause the United States simply is not tract-reading country. So owl hit upon the technique of dig
 ging up its data and making it
 available to the established inform
 ation media of press, magazines and
 radio in the form of duplicated re-
 ports. leaving it up to the writers
 and speakers to rehash such of the 1 material as they desired.
 30 REPORTS IN PAST YEAR
 These OWI reports seldom get
 out into general circulation except
 in some of the larger cities where,
 sometimes, a newspaper will repro
 duce full text. From 1000 to 5000 copies of each report are run off, at a cost of $86 per report, they say, and there it ends. In the past year t.-ere have been about 30 of these reports. All have been on more or less controversial subjects, but you'd never know it from reading the re- ports, which are pretty middling dull. They have to be. It isn't the fault of the writers, but of the sys- tenn.
 Every report which concerns a Sl1hlnnt nf iT1tprncf to agency has to be cleared by them all. That's where feuds begin.
 It took six weeks to get out the report on civilian gasoline supply. The Office of Petroleum Admins trator for War Harold L. Ickes wanted to say one thing and the then Office of Price Administrator Prentiss M. Brown wanted to say something else. Most of the time of preparation was consumed in trying to get the two parties to agree on not only the facts, but what should be said about them.
 Last summer when there was a temporary butter shortage the War Food Administration wanted to get out a quick report explaining why. OW1 didn't like what WFA pre- pared, and OWI took six weeks to get together the material it wanted. By that time the first butter short age was over and another situation had developed.
 STAFF SUBDUED
 Every effort is made to boil out all the propaganda and politics. A few of the early OWI pamphlets got out with a suspicion of New Deal economic doctrine in them and there was row in Congress. When a corrective order was issued to cut out the opinionated stuff last April, fifteen of the talented writers re- signed in huff. The staff today numbers eight, and they're pretty well subdued.
 The question Is whether all this is worth the effort. There is nothing in any of these jobs that any en- terprising newspaper couldn't do for itself, if it wanted. to. Few news papers, and few magazines for that can spend six weeks get ting a half-column or even a full page Should the government do it for them? In wartime, facts are made available to someone inside the government service which for security reasons aren't given to the entire press corps. The OWI writer can't use these facts any more than the outside writer or announcer could, but having the restricted in- formation, the government writer can make some statements the re- porter outside the government couldn't get at. Beyond that, the advantage doesn't exist
 The report system Is bad in that 1t is a further development of the government public relations hand out system, which contributes to a lazy, unenterprising press. The re- port system is not critical of gov ernment effort. It does not dig for dirt. or expose what's wrong. The report system erects a barrier be- tween the independent press and the source of news, because the in- dependent reporter can't get at the prime source of the news. Abolish ing the whole business the day the war ends or before won't be day too soon.