(2 of 2)
> At his press conference, Franklin Roosevelt added that keyhole reporting hurts the press; he suggested that the press, in its own interests, should be more concerned with what it publishes. Most newsmen would agree. Yet the problems of getting news in Washington—particularly from the State Department—are such that sometimes the most precise of newsmen must report the best information available or keep silent.
Through the Keyhole. Wrote the New York Post's Waverley Root, a "think" columnist: "The reason writers on foreign affairs are obliged to rely at times on speculation, deduction or secondary sources is that the State Department's penchant for secrecy and deception makes it impossible to check any really important facts with the Department. . . . An exception is sometimes made for certain docile writers, who are permitted access to files and documents ... in exchange for using that special information in defense of the Department against its critics.
"The Department thus deliberately attempts to lead its opponents into the errors Mr. Hull self-righteously charges them with making, by withholding from them the explanations which it gives to its tributary writers."