Press Ignores N.Y.C. Rallies

With the exception of Time and Newsweek, coverage of last Wednesday's YAF and ADA rallies was scanty in press outside New York City.

Almost all college papers west of the Hudsou left their readers unaware of the two March 7 meetings. In the Ivy League, both Yale and Harvard sent reporters to the scene and gave full coverage the next day. The Daily's Joseph L. Lieberman concluded his news article: "As the rally draw to a close the conservatives were confident their night would take its place in history. One hundred beautiful YAF hostesses dressed in blue skirts, white blouses, and red sashes, served to sustain this memory."

No Smiles

A day later two commentaries on the rallies comprised the Daily's ed page. Ross D. MacKenzie ended his column: "For a while, at least, the Liberal Establishment had been confounded. The whole thing was fantastic." MacKenzie blasted the counter-pickets as "disheveled columns [of] bearded competitors" who "did not smile, any of them." Inside the Garden, however, "there was no extremism. Some humor was still left."

Writing on the liberal counter-rally, Yalie Ronald Holden commented that "nothing particularly startling was said" in the "decadent"-looking St. Nicholas Arena. The audience for "this improvised passion play," Holden added, applauded enthusiastically for cries of "We want peace!" but only politely for "We want freedom!"

'Newsweek' Defends ADA Pickets

Recently purchased by the liberal Washington Post, Newsweek devoted 13 inches to the rallies, of which a third covered the St. Nicholas meeting. Newsweek said that Sen. Barry Goldwater (R. Ariz.) was wrong in indiscriminately "commingling" ADA, YOC, and "Nazified Renaissance Party" pickets.

Time gave the conservatives 13 inches and the liberals a footnote.

Both New York and Boston papers covered the rallies, including front-page articles in New York Times and Herald Tribune. The New York Post attacked the conservatives; the Daily News, the liberals. The Worker ignored both.

Outside the Northeastern United States, most papers (including the right-wing Chicago Tribune) did not carry the story. In Canada, a long report in the Ottawa Citizen compared the YAF rally to "a political version of Hollywood's Academy Awards Night."