Reed Irvine - Editor
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Chairman of the Board of The New York Times, and AIM's chairman, Reed Irvine, staged a half-hour debate on the performance of The Times on April 26, 1977, at Town Hall in New York City. The occasion was the annual meeting of the shareholders of The New York Times Company. About 300 shareholders and Times employees comprised the audience.
Mr. Irvine pointed out that since the previous annual meeting of The Times, AIM had sent some 56 letters to Mr. Sulzberger or other officials of The Times dealing with about 36 complaints concerning news reporting. He said that ten of the letters were specifically addressed to the editor for publication. Only one was published, and no specific corrective action had been taken in the other cases.
The AIM chairman noted that several of the letters had complained of the poor coverage The Times had given to conditions in Vietnam and Cambodia since the Communist takeover of those countries. He reminded Mr. Sulzberger that in May 1976, he had promised AIM that greater efforts would be made to report what was going on in closed societies that would not admit American journalists. Irvine said that he had failed to note any marked improvement, and he wondered if Mr. Sulzberger's wishes had been conveyed to the staff.
As an example, he pointed out that on December 16, 1976, one newspaper had carried a substantial story on conditions in Vietnam as related by a Catholic priest, Fr. Andre Gelinas. The story carried a six-column headline reading: "Priest: Thousands of Vietnamese Commit Suicide." The New York Times had covered the story inconspicuously on page 14, giving it three inches, while devoting two inches to the statement of denial by a sympathizer of the present Vietnamese regime.
Mr. Irvine observed that after Fr. Gelinas's story had been carried in the leftish New York Review of Books, it was given serious attention by The Times. The Times had even published an editorial deploring what was taking place in Vietnam on the basis of Fr. Gelinas's account. This was four months after the first news story had been all but ignored by The Times. Mr. Irvine pointed out that two weeks later The New York Review of Books inspired The Times to denounce what was taking place in Cambodia. It published a review of a French book, Cambodia: Year Zero, by Francois Ponchaud, which documented the fact that the Communists in Cambodia "are systematically massacring, isolating, and starving city and village populations, whose crime was to be born when they were." This review, Mr. Irvine said, apparently "sanctified" criticism of Cambodia.
Anthony Lewis, staff columnist of The Times, who is noted for his frequent denunciations of human rights violations in such countries as Chile, South Korea, and even England, was inspired to devote an entire column to the terrible crimes against humanity being committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. As recently as December 9, 1976, Mr. Lewis had said in a letter to Reed Irvine: "As for the horrors of present-day Cambodia, I have touched on them-but not extensively, because first-hand facts are unavailable."
Mr. Irvine asked Mr. Sulzberger why it was necessary to wait for The New York Review of Books to publicize these stories before they became worthy of major treatment by The Times.
Mr. Sulzberger said: "We obviously don't use the New York Review of Books as a guide to what we publish in the paper, but I will look into that and try to give you an answer."
Note: On May 1, 2, and 3 The Times ran excellent stories on conditions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Mr. Irvine brought up the refusal of The New York Times to tell its readers anything about the contents of the papers found in the briefcase of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean cabinet officer who was killed in Washington last September.
He pointed out that these papers indicated that Letelier had been getting large sums of money from Cuba to help finance lobbying and other activities in the U.S. The papers indicated that while Letelier was ostensibly working to promote human rights, his real objective was quite different. In a letter to Beatriz Allende Fernandez, wife of the No. 2 man in Castro's intelligence agency, Letelier had expressed the hope that before long they could achieve in Chile what had been done in Cuba. That, of course, meant the obliteration of human rights and the establishment of a total dictatorship.
Mrs. Fernandez had been sending Letelier money at the rate of $1,000 a month to assist him in his efforts. This was done secretly. Letelier had made it clear to Mrs. Fernandez that it was important that Cuba not be associated publicly with his "human rights" campaign, since that might scare off liberal members of Congress who were giving him important support. Letelier was using these sub rosa foreign payments to try to influence U.S. policy, but he did not register as a foreign agent, as required by law.
Mr. Irvine told Mr. Sulzberger that many syndicated columnists (including Jack Anderson, Evans and Novak, William F. BuckIcy, William Rusher, Jeffrey Hart, Virginia Prewett and M. Stanton Evans) had thought that this was an important enough story to write it up in their columns. The Washington Star had recently done a front-page story on it. But The New York Times had not said one word about it. Why?
Mr. Sulzberger said: "We aren't refusing to tell our readers anything. That's not the way we operate. If we find some- thing solid, something we can stick by, we will publish it. It so happens that we know the contents of those letters.
Pressed, Mr. Sulzberger was unable to say whether The Times had actually come into possession of the letters. He noted that The Washington Post had seen them and had run a story "saying that they didn't think that this whole thing held together." Possibly recognizing that this made it appear that The Times was taking guidance from The Post, Mr. Sulzberger said: "It so happens that we are looking at this story. We are looking at it very, very actively, but we don't at this point have a hard enough story that we can turn with it...We are not going to go with guesses." Mr. Sulzberger also promised to find out if anyone at The Times had actually seen the documents.
Mr. Irvine next took up the AIM effort to run an ad in The Times about the Letelier papers. He pointed out that The Times was sending out letters to AIM supporters who had protested the failure of The Times to run the ad in which they said: "This particular ad was unacceptable to The Times because it contained libelous material about an elected representative of the U.S. government." Mr. Irvine said that was false and that it libeled Accuracy in Media. This dialogue ensued.
Sulzberger: it was the judgment of our lawyers that this was libelous, that we could get into trouble. There was this one paragraph at the end of your ad. We offered to run your ad if you would change it so that we did not consider it a libel.
Irvine: We did offer to delete the paragraph and you still refused to run the ad.
Sulzberger: Yes, you offered to delete it with the words saying, "Censored by The New York Times." (Laughter)
Irvine: That's true isn't it?
Sulzberger: No, it's not true... We do not take ads that say "Censored by the New York Times." We don't take asterisks either.
Irvine: Which the Wall Street Journal found quite acceptable ...What is the rationale for the policy?
Sulzberger: The rationale for the policy is a very, very old one and rather complicated. We firmly believe that people are entitled to tell their story. There are certain things that we will not publish, but we won't get deeply involved in what it is that...
Irvine: You don't want readers to know that you have required material to be left out.
Mr. Irvine took up the issue of the alleged libel in the ad with Mr. James Goodale, executive vice president and general counsel of The Times, who was present. Mr. Goodale said that in New York it was libelous per se to call anyone a communist. Mr. Irvine said: "Mr. Goodale, to say that the World Peace Council is a communist front and that Mr. Harrington may have gotten money from them, is that the same as saying that Mr. Harrington is a communist?"
Mr. Goodale replied: "Of course it's not the same, but it's close enough for us not to want to run a statement of that sort where you are calling a peace organization a communist front organization and secondly you are saying that a payment was made by that organization to a publicly elected official. We are not going to take responsibility for publication of that statement without adequate documentation."
The fact is that it was The Times that tagged the World Peace Council a communist front as far back as 1952, and it was The Washington Post, not AIM that revealed that the expenses paid for Cong. Harrington's trip from "Helsinki" came from the Commission to Investigate the Crimes of the Chilean Military Junta. It was Evans and Novak that revealed that this appears to be an offspring of the World Peace Council.
Mr. Irvine pointed out that The Times had gone out on far shakier limbs than this in the past. He said that the refusal of The Times to run the ad even with the paragraph deleted indicated that they simply wanted to withhold from their readers information about the Letelier papers. He said he considered that to be censorship.
Mr. Irvine chided The Times for having failed to inform its readers that a 1976 article in the Times Magazine by-lined "Max Austerlitz" was really written by a United Nations employee named Alessandro Casella. The article had painted a rosy picture of conditions in South Vietnam under communist rule. AIM exposed the true identity of the author, and showed that his employment and leftist back- ground had to be considered in evaluating the accuracy of what he said. The Times admitted that it was wrong not to have told its readers that "Austerlitz" was a pseudonym, but it has never told its readers that. Mr. Irvine said that even at this late date, it was important to correct the record, since students and scholars used The Times as a source. Mr. Sulzberger promised to take the matter up with the responsible editor.
Finally, the AIM chairman took up the evident reluctance of The Times to report on criticism of the press and of The Times in particular. He cited the recent failure of The Times to report that David Rockefeller, Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, had criticized in a speech both The Times and The Washington Post by name for what he considered to be inaccurate and irresponsible reporting about "problem" banks.
Mr. Sulzberger said that was not censorship, simply news judgment. He observed that no one at Chase had complained about the failure of The Times to mention this part of the Rockefeller speech.
Mr. Irvine said that he thought The Times was stifling its critics. He asked if it would not in the future pay a little more attention to what critics of the press were saying.
Mr. Sulzberger said: "We will continue to watch it. We're not scared to publish criticism of the press or criticism of the New York Times."
In its story on its own annual meeting the following day, The New York Times said not one word about any of AIM's criticisms or questions. The Times reporter told us that he covered this, but it got lost in the editing.
However, readers of New York City's new daily, The News World, were treated to a description of the meeting, which, although flawed by some misunderstanding of what the speakers actually said, focused on the grievances voiced by AIM and other shareholders. It was the only paper we saw that reported the criticisms of the press at this meeting.
Note: On May 1, the Times published an article strongly critical of the media by Governor John B. Coonally. This was adapted from a recent speech by Connally that was not reported by the Times.
The CBS annual shareholders meeting in North Hollywood, California on April 20 was enlivened by the debate over the "viewers' advocate" resolution proposed by Accuracy in Media and by questions put to CBS chairman William S. Paley by AIM supporters.
Curt Clinkscales represented AIM and moved the resolution asking that consideration be given to appointment of a viewers' advocate or ombudsman to handle complaints from the public about inaccurate or unfair news and public affairs broadcasts. In recommending that shareholders vote against the AIM resolution, CBS management said that there was no need for a viewers' advocate. They said that CBS News has internal guidelines that help assure the highest standards of accuracy and management strictly enforces fairness and those these.
Mr. Clinkscales challenged this assertion. He pointed out that at the annual meeting in 1976, Richard S. Salant, president of CBS News, had told the shareholders that an error AIM had complained about in the documentary, "FDR: The Man Who Changed America," had been corrected subsequently in accordance with the guidelines.
Mr. Clinkscales pointed out that this was not true. in the first place the alleged conection was not made until six months after the original program in which the error was made. CBS News was still publicly denying that any error requiring correction bad been made even when they had internally decided to make a correction. It took repeated prodding by Accuracy in Media to bring them to that decision.
The "correction" was slipped into another documentary, with no indication that it was intended to correct the earlier program. Mr. Clinkscales noted that this was not in accord with the CBS News guidelines, which require that corrections be clearly labeled as such. So much for management's strict enforcement of its guidelines.
To make the case for a viewers' advocate, Mr. Clinkscales quoted Bob Schulman, press critic of the Louisville Times, who has written:
"I remember when CBS Radio had a regular program of media criticism with Charles Coilingwood. Unfortunately, it never included criticism of the performance of radio and later TV networks and their news performance. That kind of criticism of the rest of the press bad gone by the boards. I can't accept that with the network's tremendous outreach of power, they can't find someone with the competence to be on the air once a week, or once a month assessing the control, balance, accuracy and fairness of the job done by the networks. It has nothing to do with anything but a disinclination to face up to the music."
Mr. Schulman has also said: "People who really want this (an ombudsman) come from an army of viewing consumers who want urgently to be persuaded the press believes enough in the First Amendment to support criticism of itself."
Mr. Clinkscales cited the popularity of the movie, "Network," a bitter satire on TV news, as "a genuine realization by so many people that indeed what we receive as news in this country is controlled by a very small group of people."
CBS News anchorman, Waiter Cronkite, was cited as publicly criticizing news management of the Phoenix, Arizona newspapers for their failure to report on the findings of the reporters' special investigating team that looked into the Bolles murder case in Arizona. Cronkite's complaint was used to point out to CBS that even their own chief news personally felt there is bias in media news coverage.
CBS President. William Paley, expressed disbelief Cronkite's remarks could have ever been meant to publicly criticize CBS news methods. Mr. Clinkscales countered that Cronkite's remarks were directed at the Phoenix papers, but were clearly supportive of AIM's claim of bias by the media as evidenced by the gripes of their own news champion.
Mr. Paley also said the AIM proposal was "...potentially dangerous for it transfers tremendous judgmental power to a single individual, that individual looking over the shoulder of a professional journalist could have a disruptive and chilling effect on the independent judgment of CBS News, which must bear full responsibility for the accuracy and fairness of those judgments."
John Romanian asked Mr. Paley why CBS had aired two documentaries on cancer which attempted to place the blame for cancer mainly on the shoulders of industry, and gave little if any attention to a much more serious and proved cancer cause, cigarette smoking.
Mr. Paley's response was to remind the audience that CBS does not carry cigarette advertisements, and therefore they aren't suggesting people should use cigarettes. What Mr. Paley failed to tell the audience was that CBS cannot by law advertise cigarettes, and CBS never had such a policy before the law took effect.
Mr. Paley never answered the basic question, which was why CBS sought to discredit industry with these cancer programs.
Mrs. Betty Bimmerman asked Mr. Paley why there was no mention of the 30-60 million persons murdered by Mao Tse-Tung in the program reviewing his life upon his death last year. (CBS had contended 2-3 million landlords and resisters died in China when Mao took power.)
Mr. Paley said such an omission was a matter of news judgment, but he was sure the program was balanced and without prejudice.
Mrs. Lucille Pershing pointed out that CBS News had aired chitchat between Eric Sevareid and Bill Moyers at the 1976 Republican National Convention while Dr. Gloria Toote, a prominent, distinguished black woman, delivered a seconding speech for Ronald Reagan. She noted that David Brinkley called Dr. Toote's speech the best address to me convention up to that time, and she asked why CBS blacked her out.
Mr. Paley said there was no attempt to censor Dr. Toote, he was sure. It could not have been bias in the news operation, but a question of news judgment.
Curt Clinkscales asked Mr. Paley if CBS intended to take any actions to inform the American people of the terrible conditions under which the people of Cambodia and South Vietnam are now living, considering CBS's role in turning the American people against our efforts to preserve freedom for them. Clinkscales pointed out a NBC program the evening before in which the present conditions were shown on film, and wanted to know why it had not been shown on CBS.
Mr. Paley said he resented the implication of the question. CBS had had nothing to do with the outcome of the South- east Asia war, he said. He added that he was sure CBS would air any such film as that Mr. Clinkscales mentioned. So far we haven't seen them do it.
The AIM resolution received 1,106,567 votes, 4.9 percent of the total shares voted. We needed at least 6 percent to put the same resolution before the shareholders next year. Therefore, we will be looking for a new resolution to submit to CBS. Your suggestions are invited.
The National Enquirer, which hits shoppers in supermarkets in the eye with its sensational headlines, absolved Lee Harvey Oswald of the murder of John F. Kennedy in its April 26, 1977 issue.
They claimed a sensational discovery that Oswald was really a CIA employee. This was based on the discovery that the CIA had allegedly had a 201 file on him. The Enquirer quoted three former CIA employees as saying that this meant that Oswald was in the employ of the CIA. However, David Phillips, President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and himself a former high CIA official, disputes this. Mr. Phillips told us that 201 files are opened on many people in whom the CIA has an interest, including people suspected of working for the other side. He said that the existence of such a file by no means indicated that the individual covered was a CIA agent. Mr. Phillips told this to a reporter for the National Enquirer who raised the question with him, but the Enquirer says the story, had already been locked up by the time Phillips was interviewed.
Another sensational discovery was a story told by a young man who allegedly shared a hospital room with the late George de Mohrenschildt, a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald's. De Mohrenschildt recently committed suicide, after having been under psychiatric care for several years. What the Enquirer neglected to tell its readers was that the hospital room shared with de Mohrenschildt was in the psychiatric ward. According to this story, a CIA agent had offered Oswald money to kill Kennedy. The Enquirer said it was withholding the name of the agent became he was still active with the CIA.
In a letter to Generoso Pope, publisher of the National Enquirer, Reed Irvine said: "if you thought the story was true and that you would not be exposed to a libel suit, why withhold the name of a person who had committed such a terrible crime just because he is still active in the ClA? That would be all the more reason to expose him and to demand that justice be done."
The AIM Report is published twice a month by Accuracy in Media, Inc. (AIM), 777 14th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, Reed Irvine, Chairman; J. R. Van Evera, Executive Secretary. AIM is a nonprofit, educational organization, which seeks to promote accurate and fair reporting. Subscribing membership-$15, sustaining membership-$25. Membership dues are tax-deductible except for $3 for member's subscription to AIM Report. Non-member subscription is $15 a year.
We think that the failure of The Times to report on the Irvine-Sulzberger debate does not jibe with Mr. Sulzberger's assurance that The Times does not stifle criticism of it self. We have so informed Mr. Sulzberger. If you agree, let him know and urge that The Times do a better job of reporting criticism and correcting the errors we call to its attention. Write to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Chairman, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036