Then and Now

Now it seems that no truly patriotic American, especially if a newspaperman, is supposed to tell the truth once our government has decided that it is more advantageous to tell a lie. This is the real meaning of President Kennedy's appeal to the American Newspaper Publishers Association for self-censorship in the handling of the news. Mr. Kennedy put it more tactfully. He asked editors to ask themselves not only "Is it news?' but "Is it in the national interest?" But the national interest in a free society is supposed to lie in the fullest dissemination of the facts so that popular judgment may be truly informed. It is the mark of a closed or closing society to assume that the rulers decide how much the vulgar herd shall be told.

The President's real meaning was clearer to those who attended the two-day secret mass briefing, or official brainwashing, for the press at the State Department earlier in the week. There Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Roger Tubby seemed to be implying that the Cuban invasion might have worked if the press had not printed so much about it in advance. He wanted newspapers editors to ask themselves whether a particular bit of news might help the enemy and to call the State Department and ask if they were in doubt. One newspaperman present who had the spirit to challenge this was Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who objected that Tubby assumed the only thing wrong with the Cuban invasion was that it didn't work. Assuming, Dudman asked, that it was poorly conceived whether it worked or not, wouldn't it have been better to have had more information and more public discussion? This elicited only a polite mumble from Tubby, an old State Department hand now back in service who shares its ineradicable view that Papa Knows Best. This was not just post mortem since Mr. Kennedy himself told the briefing that there would be other situations, not similar he hoped, when our preparations would have to be made in secret. (I see no reason why American readers should not be allowed to know this since Soviet bloc reporters present were allowed to hear it and since I was not invited I am not bound to secrecy.) This opens the wider prospect of more adventures in which we make war without declaring it and brings us to the incident over which officials at the briefing expressed the greatest irritation.



I.F. Stone In a Time of Torment, "When The Government Lies, Must The Press Fib?" pp 388 - 390.





Joe Biden as reported by ABC News October 20th:



Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you -- not financially to help him -- we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.

[. . .]

Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, "Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?" We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us. There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, "Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision." Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound.