The Press: Confidential Stuff

Reminiscing in Chicago last week about his 1948 election victory (which is one of the things he likes to do most), Harry Truman dropped a gleeful footnotelet to the campaign.

Said he: “The president of the greatest paper in the U.S., and by that I mean the New York Times, not the Chicago Tribune* had a talk with the Pope, who incidentally is a very good friend of mine, even if I am a Baptist. [Times Publisher Arthur Hays] Sulzberger told the Pope that . . . there was not a chance I would be in the White House after Jan. 20.” When the election was over, the President added, the Pope asked Myron C. Taylor, presidential representative at the Vatican, how the head of a great newspaper could waste a half hour “in so misrepresenting the facts.”

In New York, Publisher Sulzberger replied: “I have always assumed that a conversation with the Pope was as confidential as one that might be had with the President of the U.S. . . .” The good grey Times printed the Truman anecdote in full, together with Publisher Sulzberger’s reply, coyly headlined the story: TRUMAN THE VICTOR AND IT IS ADMITTED.

* Tribune Publisher Bertie McCormick would not be confused. He calls his product the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.”