Reed Irvine - Editor
The managing editor of The Washington Post, Mr. Howard Simons, was upset by the AIM Report of March 1978, Part II, which featured an article on the paucity of media coverage of the Cambodian holocaust by Patrick Buchanan.
The article, which originally appeared in TV Guide's "Newswatch" column, described graphically conditions in Cambodia as reported by Pin Yathay, a former Cambodian official who escaped from that tortured country last year. Pin told his story to the press at a news conference in January. Buchanan said a reporter for The Post walked out midway, "asserting that she had heard enough of this 'junk.'"
In the accompanying "Notes from the Editor's Cuff," we said this was Elizabeth Becker, a junior reporter for The Post. We queried Miss Becker about this before running Pat Buchanan's article and we reported that she denied making such a statement. However, she did concede that she did not write a story about Pin Yathay. Reed Irvine wrote: "I believe that the fact that she walked out and did not write a story about Pin Yathay lends credence to those who say she made the remark."
Howard Simons thought we should have featured Miss Becker's denial more prominently, and he also wanted to know why we did not accept Miss Becker's word. He thought we owed her a retraction. We decided, therefore, to probe the handling of this Cambodia story by The Washington Post more thoroughly in an effort to find out just why Elizabeth Becker had not written and The Post had not published anything about Pin Yathay's dramatic and moving account of his personal ordeal and of the suffering of the Cambodian people under Communist rule. Was this a defensible news judgment? Was it Miss Becker's judgment? If so, what led her to make it? Was the alleged "junk" remark a clue in this mystery?
The resulting investigation turned up something far more interesting and important than we had anticipated. We could not clearly establish whether or not Miss Becker did or did not make the "junk" remark. We received a signed statement from an employee of the American Security Council who helped Miss Becker put on her coat as she left the press conference, attesting that she heard Miss Becker make the remark. On the other hand, a UPI reporter who left the conference with Miss Becker said that he did not hear her make the remark, and he thinks he would remember it if she had.
It matters little, since we were able to establish that the decision not to tell the readers of The Washington Post about Pin Yathay's story was not made by Miss Becker. She in- formed us, belatedly, that this was the decision of the national news editor, Laurence Stern. Mr. Stern at first did not recall having had any hand in the decision. After Miss Becker refreshed his memory, he said he recalled that he had discussed it with her. He said Miss Becker had told him that Pin Yathay's story was similar to what the Post's correspondent in Bangkok, Lewis Simons, was reporting about Cambodia. He said, "On that basis, we decided not to do a story," since there was nothing new in it.
Miss Becker, in turn, denied that she had presented the matter in a way that would have suggested that a story need not be written. She said that she had told the editor what Pin Yathay had to say, not pushing for or against doing a story. (If she had misrepresented Pin Yathay's statement, the editor would have discovered this when the Associated Press story on the news conference came over the wire to the Post newsroom.)
Our next step was to check to see if similar stories had appeared in The Post from Bangkok or anywhere else. The shocking fact is that we could not find in all the previous year a single news story in The Post that provided a detailed eyewitness account of the incredible treatment of the Cambodian people comparable to that provided by Pin Yathay.
We could find only six news stories in The Post in 1977 that even dealt with the question of human rights violations in Cambodia. We had to go all the way back to July 1977 to find a Lewis Simons story that dealt with reports of the horrors going on inside Cambodia. The main theme of that story was that accounts of a bloodbath had been exaggerated, but there were severe problems because of a crop failure and disease. A Washington story in the same month reported on Congressional testimony about what was happening in Cambodia. It devoted considerable space to American responsibility for the unhappy fate of Cambodia and to statements by apologists for the murderous Communist regime now controlling the country.
Confronted with the evidence that there had been no stories comparable to that of Pin Yathay in The Post in 1977, editor Laurence Stern told Reed Irvine that he was thinking not just of stories done in the previous year, but rather of stories published in 1975 and 1976 as well.
A tabulation prepared by The Post itself showed only four news stories published by that paper in 1976 dealing with the severe mistreatment of the Cambodian people. There were only 9 in 1975, according to this same tabulation.
Irvine pointed out to Mr. Stern that in 1976 The Post ran 58 stories on human rights in Chile, followed by 44 stories in 1977 on this same subject. Mr. Stern said he did not like this kind of statistical analysis. Content was important, he said.
Unfortunately, analysis of the stories on Cambodia for con- tent did nothing to help Stern's case. The longest story The Post ran on Cambodia in 1977 was a two-page article making the charge that Cambodia's plight was really the fault of the U.S. for having gotten Cambodia involved in the war. Two articles were devoted to defenses of their policies by Communist Cambodian leaders, and even the articles that discussed the agony of the Cambodian people tended to be "balanced" by mention of U.S. culpability or arguments that things were not as bad as some said.
Irvine asked Stern if he personally believed that stories such as Pin Yathay's about Cambodia were true or false. Stem replied with an evasive circumlocation, which boiled down to the dodge that the situation was too complex to justify a simple answer. He said he was bothered by the fact that those who were so concerned about Communist crimes in Cambodia today were not so concerned when it was the Americans who were doing the killing.
In late April, Reed Irvine wrote to Katharine Graham, the chairman of the board of The Post and to Howard Simons to report these findings. He concluded that it was not necessary to determine whether or not Elizabeth Becker thought the Pin Yathay story was "junk" in order to under- stand why no story about him appeared in The Post. "It seems clear," Irvine wrote, "that the decision was Mr. Stern's and that Mr. Stern is not quite sure in his own mind whether such stories are true."
Irvine noted that this same attitude apparently was found in The Post's book review department. He wrote: "I asked why it was that The Post has never published a review of Murder of a Gentle Land by John Barron and Anthony Paul (an excellent book on the Cambodian holocaust published in the spring of 1977). I was told by one of the editors that in-home experts had raised questions about the validity of this book and the methodology of the authors. Rather than run a review, where presumably these questions might be aired, the editors had simply sat on a review that they had in hand since last December."
Katharine Graham's Responsibility
Katharine Graham responded to Irvine's letters on May 5, brushing aside the charge that the stories that allegedly justified ignoring Pin Yathay simply could not be found in the pages of The Post. Mrs. Graham said: "(I)t was concluded that the testimony (Pin Yathay's) did not add substantially to the already large body of reportage from Indochina and other points which had been carried in The Washington Post on a continuing basis since the present Cambodian regime took power."
AIM therefore raised this matter at the annual shareholders' meeting of The Washington Post Co. on May 10, which Mrs. Graham chaired. Reed Irvine asked Mrs. Graham, in light of her statement quoted above, if she could cite any news stories published in The Post in the preceding year that pro- vided a detailed eye-witness account of Cambodia's agony similar to that of Pin Yathay.
Mrs. Graham responded: "It was our, it was their editorial judgment that we had in our reportage and in our comments covered the ground that was covered in the news conference. I can't tell you in detail every story- for a year... I really don't see any point in discussing it here at the stock- holders' meeting."
Mr. Irvine then asked Mrs. Graham if she carried her loyalty to her editors so far as to support them when they made demonstrably false statements on serious matters relating to the business of The Washington Post.
Mrs. Graham disputed that they had made such statements, but she said she would not support them if they did so.
Irvine then called Mrs. Graham's attention to AIM's tabulation of stories run in The Post on Cambodia in 1977. He said that Laurence Stern had said Lewis Simons was reporting stories similar to Pin Yathay's from Bangkok, but no such story could be found in the tabulation that she had before her.
Mrs. Graham promised to compare the AIM tabulation of stories with the one prepared by The Post. Mr. Irvine asked what action she would take about Mr. Stern's misrepresentation if she could find no stories that would support his claim that The Post had been running stories from Lewis Simons that covered the same ground as Pin Yathay.
"I will look it up," responded Mrs. Graham grimly.
Mrs. Graham promptly took off for Europe after the meeting was over, but we have received a copy of The Post's own tabulation of stories on Cambodia for 1975 and 1976. We find nothing there to back up Mr. Stern's statement.
The failure to run the Pin Yathay story for reasons that appear to be spurious is not the only evidence of a peculiar pattern in the treatment of Cambodia by The Washington Post.
At the annual meeting, Reed Irvine called attention to the peculiar pattern of Post reporting, saying:
"In addition to the inadequate coverage of the Pin Yathay story, we have, for example, these strange events:
(1) the failure of The Post to review an excellent book that came out on the Cambodian holocaust a year ago, Murder of a Gentle Land. The editors have been sitting on a review, I understand, since last December;
(2) the failure to review the other outstanding book on this subject, Cambodge: Annee Zero by Francois Ponchaud. It was in French, but other publications reviewed it even though it was not avail- able-in English. It will be available in English (soon).
(3) There was no report of a very important international investigation that was held in Oslo the weekend before last (April 22), investigating the Cambodian holocaust. I under- stand that it was extensively reported by the European press. Nothing in The Washington Post.
(4) No mention of the fact that the House of Commons in Canada condemned what is going on in Cambodia in the strongest terms;
(5) no mention of the fact that a few days later (April 24) the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed such a condemnation;
(6) the relegation of President Carter's own very strong statement on this issue to page A-20 of The Post (April 22), when the President said that the reason he was making this strong statement was to focus world opinion on the problem;
(7) the failure to carry anything on the dramatic story of Frank Emmick, who came to Washing- ton in mid-March and gave a very dramatic press conference, his first statement to the press (about the treatment he received during his 14 years as a prisoner of Castro). The wire services carried good stories on this. He has been on Good Morning, America. He has had an op-ed page article in The New York Times."
Irvine went on to recall that the only mention of Emmick in The Washington Post had been a "despicable editorial," which had smeared this courageous and long-suffering victim of Fidel Castro, calling him a "frog-leg salesman" and implying that Emmick really was a CIA agent despite his denials and all evidence to the contrary. (See AIM Report for April 1978, Part I for more on Frank Emmick.)
Irvine said to Mrs. Graham: "One has to wonder why these types of stories are being so consistently spiked. Doesn't it arouse any curiosity in your mind? It certainly does in mine."
The Cambodian holocaust does not seem to be of great interest to the editors of The Washington Post-and many other publications and broadcasters. The Post itself took cognizance of this when it ran an article on May 7 by columnist Smith Hempstone about the awful silence about Cambodia. Hempstone wrote: "Not a dissident sparrow can fall in Chile, Brazil, South Korea, Iran or South Africa ... without touching off a cacophony of indignant accusations and ideological hand-wringing."
We think that Katharine Graham should ask editor Laurence Stern for the real reason for his killing of the Pin Yathay story, since the reason he has given simply does not hold water. Also, the editors should be asked to explain the great disparity in the number of stories on human rights violations in countries such as South Africa and Chile and countries such as Cambodia and Cuba, bearing in mind that The Post still has not published a news story on Frank Emmick's experience as a prisoner of Castro for 14 years.
If you agree, write to Mrs. Katharine Graham, Chairman of the Board, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C. 20071.
MEDIA LACK INFILTRATION DEFENSE
A high level defector from the Soviet Union told a Senate investigative committee several years ago that Soviet foreign minister Molotov had prepared a report for the Soviet Politburo about the need to infiltrate the non-communist press.
As the defector recalled it, this is what Molotov said: "Who reads the Communist papers? Only a few people who are already Communists... We have to influence non-Communists if we want to make them Communists or we want to fool them. So we have to try to infiltrate in the big press, to influence millions of people, and not merely hundreds of thousands."
With this in mind, AIM's chairman, Reed Irvine, recently asked the chairmen of the boards of CBS, ABC and The Washington Post what these companies were doing to protect themselves against infiltration.
At the CBS annual shareholders' meeting in St. Louis, Chairman William S. Paley replied: "I am sure that very, very close examination is made of anybody who joins the CBS News organization." He then turned to Richard S. Salant, President of CBS News and asked him if he had any comment.
Mr. Salant said: "I don't know quite what procedures we could adopt. It would be a terrible abomination if any such thing happened. If we ever got any slight indication, then we would move as fast as we could. I have never heard of any evidence that any such thing has happened. Of course, we do everything in the world to protect ourselves."
But it seemed clear that CBS News had no specific protective measures in place. "Do you have any suggestions?" he asked of Mr. Irvine.
The chairman of the board of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham, was also vague about specifics. "We do our best," she said, "and we certainly are concerned."
Asked what specific measures The Post took, Mrs. Graham said: "We ask them. We try to check as best we can, There is no way that you can totally check that a reporter has nothing to do with French intelligence or British intelligence. You just do your best..."
Irvine asked Mrs. Graham if she thought that anyone in the employ of the Soviet KGB would tell her of that connection if she asked them. "No," said Mrs. Graham, "I think that is up to the judgment of our editors, and I believe that they certainly have nobody in that kind of category."
Irvine asked about The Washington Post's man in Havana, Lionel Martin. He had gone to Cuba to live and work soon after Castro seized power. Martin had worked for the Castro government as an adviser and had written for the communist-Maoist publication, The Guardian. What efforts, Irvine asked, had The Washington Post made to ascertain whether or not Martin, a long-time resident of Cuba, was under the control of Cuban intelligence?
Mrs. Graham referred to a prepared statement about Mr. Martin's employment at The Post, a copy of which she said she would give us. We have not been able to obtain that memo. The Post has sent us a shorter statement, which merely notes that Martin had worked for several years in the early 1960's as a consultant to the Ministry of Education in Cuba and had contributed articles to a number of publications, including the communist Guardian.
The statement said that Martin's work for the Cuban Ministry of Education and his writing for the Guardian had been discussed with him before he was employed by The Post. He was told that "if he wanted to be a stringer for The Post, journalistic objectivity and independence would be required."
The Post took comfort in the fact that Mr. Martin had also been accepted as a stringer by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, ABC and the Toronto Globe and Mail. But in this brief statement, the possibility of his being under the control of the Cuban Directorate General of Intelligence was not even alluded to.
Irvine asked if Mrs. Graham thought Martin would put any DGI connection on his job application.
"I would not," Mrs. Graham said, "but I would see no reason to suspect that he is from what we know."
However, even if editors had the ability to smell out a KGB agent, the problem would not necessarily be solved. The sad fact is that editors have been known to have collaborated with Soviet intelligence. One of the most famous cases was that of Joseph Barnes, who was foreign editor of the now defunct New York Herald-Tribune, a Republican paper. Testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1952 identified Barnes as a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist and Soviet agent.
Positive identification of foreign agents, whether in the media or any other field, usually depends on the testimony of a defector from the other side or a double agent. However, the function of an agent of influence in the news media is to get material published or to keep stories damaging to communism from appearing.
They are therefore obliged to leave clues in what they write, the stories they run, and the stories they kill. A high ranking Soviet official who defected a few years ago, Dr. Igor Glagolev, observes that certain journalists always follow the Communist line. "If you just read their articles, it is quite clear that they are somehow connected with the leadership of the Soviet Union," he says.
No less important is the killing of significant stories, but the average reader is generally unaware of what the media are suppressing. Editors and publishers who are genuinely interested in making sure that their publications (or broad- casting facilities) are not being manipulated by foreign intelligence services have an obligation to pay particular attention to the important stories that their reporters or editors are withholding.
Mrs. Graham should be upset when she finds that an editor kills an important story and then gives a justification for his action that is not supported by the facts. But what upset her was not this. but rather the suggestion that she had any reason to be concerned about this kind of problem.
Pressed by Reed Irvine at the stockholders' meeting, to say if she thought that a powerful organ such as The Washing- ton Post would be overlooked as a possible KGB target, Mrs. Graham said: "I am sure we would be a target, if that's what you want me to say, and I am also sure that the editors of this company's newspaper are not disloyal to their country, and with that I am really going to end this discussion."
That ended the discussion, but the problem remains. Mrs. Graham and other heads of Big Media admit that their organizations are prime targets of the KGB. but they are unwilling Io even think that they may have been infiltrated. Their non-existent defenses and their naive belief that it couldn't happen to them makes the KGB's job an easy one.
TV GUIDE DROPS TV NEWS CRITIQUE
Those interested in the battle to keep TV news honest have suffered a great loss with the recent scuttling of the "News- watch" column of TV Guide. This column was written on a rotating basis by Edith Efron, author of The News Twisters, and syndicated columnists Pat Buchanan, Kevin Phillips and John Roche.
Their sharp, hard-hitting criticisms were a refreshing contrast to those critics who automatically praise every program that knocks America, our institutions and values. They were a thorn in the side of the TV moguls, but they could not be ignored. I'V Guide is the largest circulation magazine in the country, and it is "a bully pulpit."
The column was popular, and TV Guide was featuring it in ads as a reason to subscribe to the magazine right up to the end. The reasons for its sudden, unannounced death are a mystery. TV Guide says that the writers were running out of things to write about. However. three of the four regulars dispute that, and we saw no sign that the columns were losing their punch or sparkle.
The decision is said to have been made by TV Guide's owner, Walter H. Annenberg. We have urged Amb. Annenberg to reinstate this column. We urge that you join in this. Write to Walter H. Annenberg, President, Triangle Publications, Radnor, PA 19088.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
I hope you won't think that we are running a good story into the ground when you read this issue of the AIM Report.
For some time now, one of our supporters in particular has been urging that we look more at the patterns of reporting rather than at individual cases of misreporting. We did this last fall when we surveyed coverage of human rights violations by The New York Times and The Washington Post for several different countries. The findings were quite an eye-opener, showing in stark numbers the heavy emphasis these papers were placing on human rights violations in Chile and South Korea in contrast with very limited reporting about violations in such countries as Cambodia, North Korea and Cuba, where violations were more pervasive.
Recently we took a close look at The Washington Post's coverage of the genocidal policies of the barbarians who have seized control of Cambodia. We not only counted the stories The Post ran in 1977, we read the stories. It was not such a big task, since the number of stories was surprisingly small. We completed our research in time to raise some very pointed questions at the Washington Post stockholders' meeting on May 10.
I think that what we found is very important. We were able to pin the responsibility for killing what I think should have been a "must" story about the Cambodian terror on a specific editor. And what is more, the editor gave a factually unsupported reason for having killed the story and then waffled on the question of whether or not he believes that the stories of a holocaust in Cambodia are true.
Why this particular editor, Laurence Stern, did these things I don't pretend to know. I would certainly not suggest that one can prove that a reporter or an editor is in the pay of foreign intelligence simply on the basis of the way they handle certain news stories. However, in this age pay is not the dominant incentive behind service to certain foreign powers. Ideology is far more important than monetary reward in many, perhaps most, cases.
If an editor refuses to run stories such as those of Pin Yathay, Frank Emmick and the expose of the contents of Orlando Letelier's briefcase, thereby avoiding causing damage the image of communists or those on the left, he serves the communist cause just as surely as he would if he were getting paid by them. The proper question therefore is not whether such an individual is in the pay of a foreign power or is subject to the discipline of the Communist Party, but do his decisions follow a pattern of harming the forces of freedom and benefiting the enemies of freedom.
A publisher or broadcaster who is genuinely concerned about avoiding infiltration of his organization by foreign intelligence services really has no alternative but to keep a close eye on the way stories are being played up or played down or killed. And when a demonstrably false reason is given for killing a good story a thorough investigation would be an appropriate reaction.
Our full-page ad in The Washington Post (see reverse) on May 10 has been hailed as the best ad we have ever run. It has been suggested that we run it in other papers If you would like to see it run in your paper and you can help finance it, let us know.