| OCR Text |
Show Washington Comment liefoie Mr. IiooM.-vi.-lt dopated for Hyde Pak "to get a.ay from it all," he bad a pn--,s. conference which was a vast improvement on tho.-e which have Wri held recently. recent-ly. ... It was. former Rro-.ident Hoover who adopted the tocliiique of written questions which were submitted to the chief executive nefoie '.he press; was admitted, ari'i answered by him after due 'consideration. 'con-sideration. Although the newspaper news-paper men weie. not particularly keen about this method, it had the great advantage of clear .aitI. concise con-cise answers and eliminaU-tlany p ssibility of confusion iji.j the minds of press or readers. Jl a. so showed up any confusion "in the mind of the man answering the question! Of late, Mr. Pyxsvelt's pie-s conferences have had. 'that confusing element; he has, since his first appeaiance in the White (Continued on last pagej- o Washington Comment (Continued from first page) House, answered all questions orally. For a time, the method was very popular and conducive to great good will, clarity, and a sort of chummy confidence. But after a while and particularly of late the press has been criticized by ardent new dealers for allowing confused and incomplete statements state-ments to creep into the reports of these White House conferences. It has been thought that perhaps Mr. Roosevelt, using the oral instead in-stead of the written method, failed to consider or to express his answers an-swers with sufficient clarity and adequacy thus giving the public the impression that there was some confusion in his own mind. There has been talk of returning to Mr. Hoover's written technique, but, for the time being, the problem prob-lem has been solved to everyone's satisfaction: Mr. Roosevelt now prepares in advance a statement on some matter of importance, directs di-rects questions to himself and answers them and orally answers any further questions on the subject sub-ject from those who attend his press conferences. Only just launched, the method would seem very effective, but it remains to be seen if the accusing cry of i "confusion" is still levelled at the ! press. ; o |
