Over the past half-century, the United States suffered its most costly foreign policy setbacks in Vietnam and earlier in China, and in both episodes journalists were key players. In Vietnam reporters stirred public opinion at home with their unrestrained coverage of the war, hastening American withdrawal. But a very different chapter was written in China, one in which a coterie of editors involved the United States more deeply in the country's civil war -- and persisted after their side lost -- by censoring and distorting the news. That history is recalled in Thomas Griffith's Harry & Teddy. Harry is Henry R. Luce, editor-in-chief and publisher of Time and Life magazines, who is depicted as having been largely instrumental in persuading the United States to adopt the failed China policy, and Teddy is Theodore H. White, celebrated writer on China who differed with Luce on policy but served as his hapless employee from 1939 to 1946. White went on to distinguish himself as a political reporter, winning a Pulzer Prize for The Making of the President 1960, his classic reprise of John F. Kennedy's triumph over Richard Nixon. Although much of what Griffith relates can be found in the works of Luce's biographers and White's own autobiography In Search of History, the author in exploring the relationship of two of the most interesting journalists of their generation puts together a fresh and readable account of a tumultuous period in American history.

Griffith, who worked for the Luce organization for forty-five years as a reporter and top editor, documents how Luce manipulated the news columns of Time and Life magazines to rally American support for Chiang Kai-shek in his civil war with Mao Tse-tung. Luce, devout son of a Presbyterian missionary, who built his powerful publishing empire from scratch, was convinced that only Chiang could preserve China from communism and might even convert its people to Christianity. After the communist conquest of the China mainland in 1949, Luce's single-minded campaigning was a major factor in impelling the United States to sever all communication with the most powerful nation in Asia and one-fifth of the world's population.

The reporting on China in Luce's magazines differed from what Americans were reading in other publications. Such correspondents as A. T. Steele of the New York Herald Tribune, Henry R. Lieberman and Tillman Durdin of The New York Times, and Phil Potter of the Baltimore Sun, among others, were faithfully recording China developments. The critical difference was that these correspondents and their publications, bound by self-imposed disciplines of evenhanded reporting, made much Tess of an impact simply because the highly popular Time and Life magazines were unrestrained in injecting Luce's opinions into their news columns.

Griffith's book is subtitled "The Turbulent Friendship of Press Lord Henry R. Luce and His Favorite Reporter, Theodore H. White." But the intimate story of the relationship, as told by Griffith, who was given access to the voluminous files of Time Inc. and White's private estate papers, hardly bears out that description. Infatuation with China drew the two men together, but Luce's friendship never extended to a tolerance of White's views. While posted in China White endured censorship and distortion of his dispatches to Time. Distraught, he protested and frequently spoke of quitting. But as Griffith explains it, his impoverished childhood in a Jewish ghetto in Boston had taught him fiscal caution and made him fearful of being without a job. It was only after being ordered home in 1945 from his post as correspondent in Chungking, Chiang's wartime capital, that White was able to make his views publicly known. Taking a six-month leave of absence, he joined with Annalee Jacoby, another Time staffer, to writehunder Out of China, a vivid portrait of wartime China, which became a best-seller.

The book indicted the Chiang regime for ineptitude and corruption and warned that continued American support would only be self-defeating. It urged the United States to adopt a neutral stance in the civil war so that it would be in a position eventually to encourage growth of democratic institutions in China. White admired the discipline of the Maoist forces and was charmed by Chou En-lai, but he did not embrace the Chinese communists. White's views of Chiang's prospects were consonant with those of generals Joseph W. Stilwell and George C. Marshall, who sought on presidential missions to reform and sustain Chiang's forces; with those of John King Fairbank, the eminent American scholar; and with those of the top China specialists in the State Department. All were to become targets, if not victims, when Senator Joseph McCarthy poisoned the political climate in the United States with his accusatory cry "Who lost China?"

For Luce the views expressed in Thunder Out of China precluded any possibility that he would approve of White's returning to China for his magazines. He was unyielding when White, whose attitude toward the communists had hardened, pleaded: "But Harry, I want you to know I have changed my mind about China." Denied any acceptable posting, White resigned. Nevertheless, his friendship with Luce continued, although somewhat intermittently. In Griffith's description of the relationship, Luce emerges as the more principled. He seeks out White, enjoying his wit and engaging personality, but is steadfast in his attitude as an employer; White, relishing proximity to power, flatters Luce while raging against him privately. In 1957 in an off-the-record interview with the New York Post, White speaks of Luce as "largely responsible for the dead end our policy has reached in the Far East. He's more than a publisher, or editor, or journalist. He's a sovereign; he has enormous power, a power uncontrolled, unchecked, a thereby dangerous." When the interview unexpectedly became public, White rather fulsomely apologized to Luce. In 1964, when Luce retired, three years before his death, White wrote to him saying: "As a reporter I feel orphaned by the retirement of the greatest of American editors."

White was only one of a group of brilliant elitist editors and talented writers who yielded to Luce's dictation despite deep resentment about the ruthless manner in which he compelled them to slant the news. On major political issues affecting China and, domestically, the Republican party, Luce was willing to anger his staff as well as "jeopardize the integrity of his magazines," Griffith tells us. "Time magazine could no longer be counted on to treat each side fairly; it distorted or concealed facts favorable to the other side; by its selective use of pictures and acerbic adjectives it maligned its opposition."

Griffith repeatedly returns to the question of why Luce's staff continued to work for him despite their unhappiness about his management of the news. Time magazine reporters not infrequently were berated for living with the rewriting of their copy in what was derisively called group journalism rather than give up their lush perks. Some, like John Hersey, who was a Moscow correspondent, did resign. At one point, Hersey complained, he had filed 11,000 words only to have Whittaker Chambers, then the foreign editor, use a mere 168. Chambers, a former Soviet agent who converted to militant anticommunism and bore witness against Alger Hiss at Hiss's perjury trial, was for years one of Luce's closest advisers on foreign affairs.

Many of those who worked for Luce, including Griffith, who served as editor of Life and assistant managing editor of Time, were attracted to his publications because he offered them the challenge and excitement of a new kind of journalism. Luce recruited such writers as Archibald MacLeish, John Kenneth Galbraith, and James Agee for Fortune, another of the successful magazines he started. Time and Life were hailed by educators for stimulating greater public interest in fields that newspapers had largely neglected, such as science, medicine, education, and philosophy. Some writers enjoyed the uninhibited Time style, which honored wit more than fact. Others, while troubled by Luce's excesses, agreed with his credo that value judgments are inescapable in reporting the news. "The judgmental journalism Luce exercised in the news columns is now commonplace in newspapers and magazines that once denounced the practice," Griffith insists. He cites the current trend to news analysis and commentary and instances wre news and opinion are sometimes combined in the same story. Although there is some validity in the comparison, Griffith ignores the essential difference. Editors and reporters rather than press lords in present-day joumalism are in the main making the decisions about content, writing styles, and ethical frameworks. Today's corporate owners are more interested in profits than in the substance of the news. Time Warner dictates budgets to the editors of Time magazine, not editorial policy. That is not unalloyed good news for editors. Preoccupation with the bottom line can mean fewer resources for quality journalism.

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