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Virtually every editor who blazed away at his confreres cited the Englewood pic-ture-taking episode reported in the New York Times as an example of yellow journalism at its worst. As every alert editor already knew, the pictures were taken by Hearst photographers, printed in Hearst's New York American and tabloid New York Mirror, distributed by Hearst's International News Photos. But for four days not one editor dared to mention that prime fact. Meantime, asked by Reuters News Agency for his opinion of the Lindbergh flight, Publisher Hearst used it for attacks on the New Deal and aliens. Wrote he in part: "It would certainly seem that a government which is so liberal, not to say wasteful, in spending the people's money, might use some of the money for the useful and needful purpose of purging the country of the murderers, robbers, kidnappers, blackmailers, gangsters and rack- eteers which have invaded it from other lands as vermin invade a neglected house."
Three days later Publisher David Stern, a New Dealer who hates Mr. Hearst as much as Mr. Hearst hates the New Deal, slapped a two-column editorial on the front page of his New York Post under the headline: HOW HEARST HELPED DRIVE THE LINDBERGHS INTO EXILE. Quoting part of Mr. Hearst's message to Reuters, the editorial proceeded as follows: "What Hearst Did Not Reveal":
1) The photographs of Jon Lindbergh were taken by Hearstlings, printed in Hearstpapers. "And Hearst talks of ver-min!"
2) Hearst's New York Mirror is currently drumming up circulation and sympathy for Hauptmann by printing exclusively his "sloppily sentimental" autobiography. "And Hearst talks of vermin!"
3) Hearst blames the New Deal for U. S. crime, but the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. occurred during the Hoover Administration.
4) Troublemaking Governor Hoffman is "an especial pet of Hearst." "And Hearst talks of vermin!"
Only apparent defender of the Yellow Press was the Patterson-McCormick tabloid New York Daily News, which cracked: "If the country is going to pot (which we don't think it is), it is not because Lindbergh has left us. A run-out by one harried and frightened prominent citizen does not indicate that the mass of decent people are in danger of being engulfed by the underworld."
Refugees' Reception. Cables announced that every newspaper in London was sending reporters and cameramen to meet the Lindbergh ship at Liverpool, that to guard against a possible Lindbergh dodge some journals were sending men to Cobh, Belfast and Glasgow.
Across two columns on the main news page of its Sunday edition that most stiff-necked of the world's newspapers, the London Times, spread the photograph of Jon Lindbergh.