THE SILENT TREATMENT FOR SAKHAROV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100020007-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 3, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: June 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Published by ACCURACY IN MEDIA, INC.
1341 G Street, N.W., Suite 312
Washington, D.C. 20005 ? Telephone: [phone]
Reed Irvine, Editor
THE SILENT TREATMENT FOR SAKHAROV
President Reagan proclaimed May 21 "Andrei Sakharov
Day," honoring the brilliant Russian physicist and
Nobel Peace Prize winner who languishes in internal
exile in the Soviet Union. Sakharov, the father of the
Soviet H-homb, has long been it leader of the human
rights movement in the Soviet Union. He was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, hut the Soviets
responded by sending him off to the city of Gorky in
January 1980. Gorky is off-limits to Westerners, and
Sakharov is effectively cut off from contact with
Western reporters, as well as other human rights
activists.
In 1981, Sakharov attracted worldwide attention to his
treatment by going on a hunger strike that lasted 17
days. Since then he has suffered two heart attacks. In
proclaiming Sakharov Day, President Reagan said that
Andrei Sakharov's bold and penetrating voice is in
danger of being stilled. He said, "Not only is he denied
his freedom, but his health is in danger, jeopardized by
constant harassment and lack of decent medical
attention." But it is not only his harassment and his
health that is silencing Sakharov. The American media
are falling down in their job of keeping the burning issue
of the shameful treatment of this great man by the
communists a burning issue. The reporting of the
proclamation of Sakharov Day is a case in point.
The network television evening news programs
completely ignored President Reagan's action and
moving appeal on Sakharov's behalf. The New York
Times found that it could spare only one-column inch on
page A9 to cover the story. The Washington Post, whose
chairman had just proclaimed it to be it newspaper that
strives for "accuracy, fairness and completeness," did
twice as well. It devoted two-column inches to the story.
It reduced it 480-word UPI story to 65 words, omitting
the President's eloquent praise of Sakharov as "a man of
uncommon courage and decency who speaks for those in
the Soviet Union and elsewhere who yearn for
fulfillment of their human rights." It also omitted his
appeal for Sakharov's freedom, in which he said, "The
work) needs his learning, his wisdom, his nobility."
The Washington Times Does Better
Other newspapers around the country that we saw did
no better than The New York 'l'imes and The
Washington Post. The one exception was The Washing-
ton Times, it new daily which just celebrated its first
anniversary. It reported President Reagan's action
proclaiming National Andrei Sakharov Day in it 240-
word story, which it followed up the next day with it
powerful editorial and it profile of Sakharov.
Its editorial said: "It behooves Americans, so pro-
foundly favored in this vicious world and often so
complacent in our rare fortune, to reflect on the
continuing ordeal the Soviet Union is visiting upon
those of its citizens who are audacious enough to defy
totalitarianism. Sakharov is a poignant symbol of the
courage such defiance requires-and the crushing
callousness with which the communist state responds
to such courage." It added that President Reagan had
said that the treatment of Sakharov demonstrates that
the communists "are aware of the shakiness of their rule
and the fragility of their claims of legitimacy, and that is
why they seek to stifle dissent." Many in the media were
outraged when in a recent speech President Reagan
described the Soviet Union as the "focus of evil" in the
world. But when the President cited as evidence of that
evil the treatment of Andrei Sakharov, our big media
ignored his words.
The same silent treatment was given to the program
sponsored by the International Sakharov Committee at
the Kennedy Center in Washington on May 20. The
program featured it brilliant concert by the Soviet
Emigre Orchestra and Renata Babak, who formerly
starred with the Bolshoi Opera 'T'heater and who was
the first Soviet singer to defect to the West. There were
speeches by Cong. Toni Lantos, Paul Weyrich, president
of the Free Congress Foundation, Reed Irvine, chairman
of Accuracy in Media, and Nicholas von Mach, one of
the organizers of the newly formed Resistance
International. Again, only The Washington "Times
publicized the event.
Irvine's Remarks
Addressing the audience that filled the Terrace Theater
at the Kennedy Center, Reed Irvine pointed out that the
failure of the American media to cause President
Reagan's tribute to Sakharov to reverberate throughout
the land could have tragic consequences. He noted that
Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, had recently said that
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if Western interest in her husband diminishes, the secret
police "will one day come and kill him." It was therefore
important for the President to proclaim Sakharov Day,
but that action, Irvine said, is to some extent negated by
the non-response of most of the media.
AIM's chairman pointed out that Sakharov is well
aware of the importance of obtaining the cooperation of
the Western media in the difficult struggle for freedom
in the Soviet Union. He cited the message that Sakharov
sent to the International Sakharov Hearings held in
Washington in September 1979. Sakharov said that
"openness and publicity" should be the main weapon in
the defense of human rights. The hearings brought
together many victims of communism, prominent
Soviet exiles, who gave expert testimony on the
suffering of those doomed to life under communism.
Sakharov said: "I hope that the mass communications
media, including Western radio stations broadcasting to
the Soviet Union, will devote their attention to the
hearings and will convey detailed information about
them to people living in the West, in the USSR, and in
Eastern Europe."
That hope had been disappointed, Irvine said. Our
media virtually ignored the hearings, leaving the
participants disappointed and angry. Vladimir Bukov-
sky, who had spent a major part of his life in Soviet
prisons or psychiatric wards for dissidents, commented
acidly that The Washington Post had relegated a story
on the hearings to a part of the paper devoted to "vogues
and fashions." "We are not a fad or fashion," he said. The
story was not a serious article. Irvine pointed out that
three months later Sakharov was arrested and sent off
to exile in the closed city of Gorky.
Why Such Perverse Journalism?
Why would a paper that professes dedication to the
cause of human rights brush off the proclamation of
Sakharov Day with a 65-word condensation of a wire
service story? Irvine said: "Three days earlier this very
same newspaper (The Washington Post) had carried a
front-page story about a local woman who had done
something truly remarkable. She had written a letter to
Yuri Andropov criticizing American policy, and it was
published in Komsomolskaya Pravda."
Irvine suggested that the answer might be found in a
letter Sakharov had smuggled to the West from his exile
in Gorky which had been published in The New York
Times on June 8, 1980. In it he warned of the great
influence of the KGB in influencing the West.
He said: "The West is filled with citizens who by reason
of their positions are able to promote Soviet influence
and expansionist goals." Some, he said, were motivated
by idealism. Others act as they do because it is
fashionable or profitable. A third category, he said,
"consists of naive, poorly informed or indifferent people
who close their eyes and ears to the bitter truth and
eagerly swallow any sweet lie." "Finally," he said, "there
is the fourth group-people who have been `bought' in
the most direct sense of the word, not always with
money. These include some political figures, business-
men, a great many writers and journalists, government
advisers, and heads of press and television. Overall,
they make up quite a group of influential people."
In his letter, Sakharov warned that the West faces "very
difficult times and cruel cataclysms" if it failed to "show
the required firmness, unity and consistency in resisting
the totalitarian challenge." Irvine was warmly
applauded when he told the Kennedy Center audience, "I
say to you tonight that we will not successfully resist
that challenge as long as our people are misguided and
confused by a press that is flabby at best and at worst
fickle in its commitment to the great cause of human
freedom."
THE POST ROAST
"Quality is an ever-present goal as we exercise the craft
of journalism. It's reflected in the pursuit of accuracy,
fairness, completeness and truth." So said Katharine
Graham, chairman of the board of the Washington Post
Co. at its annual shareholders' meeting on May 13,1983.
Mrs. Graham was asked repeatedly about stories that
had appeared in The Washington Post and Newsweek,
and about some that had not appeared. It was suggested
that if these publications were pursuing accuracy,
fairness, completeness and truth they were frequently
failing to catch up with them.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, the co-author of The Spike, the
novel that made disinformation a household word,
started off with the following statement:
"I'm sure it will come as no surprise to the management
of the Washington Post Company if I tell you that
Newsweek's treatment of the Hitler diary forgery has
deeply shocked the journalistic fraternity-not to
mention the public at large. Nothing like it has been seen
since the Janet Cooke scandal in The Washington Post. If
any high-ranking government official had been guilty of
such a grievous error of judgment, The Washington Post
would have demanded his or her resignation. The so-
called `Hitler Diaries' were palpable forgeries from the
word go, and I said so publicly on radio and television
three hours after the story first broke. Not only did
Newsweek's two top editors decide to devote a 13-page
cover story to the scam, but the 39-column story itself
repeatedly conveyed the impression that the diaries
were authentic. This is a clear case of unaccountable
media power out of control. The Sunday Times
apologized for buying into the scam; two top editors of
Stern resigned for their part in perpetrating the scam,
and the reporter responsible has been fired and is being
sued by his former employer. Bob McCloskey, The
Washington Post ombudsman, was appalled by
Newsweek's conduct. Nowhere in its follow-up cover
story did Newsweek acknowledge that its original cover
misled its readers. Newsweek even went so far as to say
that the diaries were of tremendous historical
significance, whether they were genuine or not. That is
the most ludicrous statement I have ever seen in
Newsweek, and I spent 30 years on the magazine. I have
seen four Newsweek editors fired over the last 10 years
for what were minor misdemeanors compared to this
latest scandal. So my question to the management of
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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
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AIM Report
ATTENDING THE ANNUAL SHAREHOLDERS' MEETINGS OF CBS, RCA, ABC AND THE WASHINGTON
Post is one of the most interesting things that I do for AIM. Our brief reports of
these meetings in the AIM Report generally don't do them full justice. In this issue
we report on The Washington Post meeting, which is always lively. Arnaud de Borchgrave
attended to ask how come no editor was being fired at Newsweek to atone for the way
the magazine played the forged Hitler diaries. Newsweek had made the particularly
asinine statement that it almost didn't matter if the diaries were genuine or not.
Surprisingly, Mrs. Katharine Graham echoed that, saying, "It was an interesting story
whether they (the diaries) were true or false." Forgery stories may be interesting,
but The Washington Post has not always been so unconcerned about having been taken in
by a hoax. I recall that in 1971, The Post fell for a joke that William F. Buckley, Jr.
pulled in National Review. He had published excerpts of what purported to be additional
Pentagon papers, with tongue in cheek. The Post took them seriously and ran a news
story about these new secret documents. They were furious when they found they had
fallen for a fairly transparent practical joke. The anger was so great that a few
weeks later The Post refused to report a statement issued by 11 prominent conservatives
announcing that they were suspending their support of President Nixon. The reason was
that Bill Buckley was one of the eleven!
OTHER CRITICISMS MADE AT THE POST MEETING WHICH WE HAVE NOT COVERED IN THIS REPORT
include: (1) The failure of the paper to carry a report on the presentation of the
$170,000 Templeton Prize for contributions to religion to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
his acceptance speech in which he discussed, among other things, Soviet influence in
the anti-nuclear campaign; (2) The spiking of a Jack Anderson column which identified
Sen. Edward Kennedy and several liberal Democrats has having been accused of involvement
in drug use on Capitol Hill; Ben Bradlee said the column was killed because the charges
were unsubstantiated, but I pointed out that The Post had earlier printed five Anderson
columns in which Sen. Strom Thurmond was charged with taking a bribe and this was on the
basis of the unsubstatiated statements of a man under indictment for fraud and with a
reputation for telling wild stories (a Justice Dept. investigation cleared Sen. Thurmond);
(3)the failure of The Post to provide its readers with an adequate report of the misdeeds
of CBS News as revealed in the Benjamin report after having published several stories
taking the side of CBS in its controversy with Gen. Westmoreland.
MURRAY BARON, THE PRESIDENT OF AIM, MADE A STATEMENT AT THE POST MEETING IN WHICH
he said, "I am here today to support the visiting of chilling effects upon the media."
He explained that when a newspaper's counsel advised against running a story because it
might be libelous, the reporters and editors were "appropriately chilled." He noted
that the "criminal and civil law is, in essence, a codification of chills." He said,
"Feverish journalism breeds chills .... How long do you think the public is going to abide
by the double standard so palpable now, so that when it is established that Gen. West-
moreland is, indeed, the victim of a conspiracy, not the practitioner of a conspiracy--
a conspiracy by CBS documentarians, the cry of 'chilling effect' goes up." Mr. Baron
said, "If you're saying to the public that if we are not shown to have exercised malice
or reckless disregard of the truth, we can defame ... then you have defamed this remarkable
enterprise known as the free press."
I STILL HAD SEVERAL ISSUES TO RAISE WHEN MRS. GRAHAM ADJOURNED THE MEETING. ONE
was The New Republic's criticism of the award of a Pulitzer Prize to Loren Jenkins of
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The Post for his coverage of "the invasion of Beirut and its aftermath." Martin Peretz,
the publisher of The New Republic, had showed that Jenkins' reporting was badly flawed
by error and distortion. It is interesting that The Post in a full page ad boasting
of the two Pulitzer Prizes it won, incorrectly said Jenkins' prize had been given for
his coverage of "the invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath." Jenkins had not covered
the first phase of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the Pulitzer Prize committee
had been precise in honoring him only for the Beirut phase. Joshua Muravchik, who has
published a detailed criticism of The Post's coverage of the war in Lebanon, suggests
that the ad was a deliberate effort to claim that its coverage had been vindicated by
the Pulitzer Prize committee.
THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS NOT YET APOLOGIZED TO DR. EDWARD TELLER AND OTHERS WHOSE
good names it smeared in the story by Jeff Gerth that we discussed in our last issue.
They declined to run a letter from AIM which answered the many errors and false insinua-
tions in Gerth's story about Teller and other shareholders in Helionetics Inc. After
having smeared these men in a lengthy front-page story on April 28, The Times said nothing
more on the subject until May 20, when it ran on page D3 a short story headlined, "An
Adviser to Reagan Cleared." The story reported that the White House had looked into
The Times' charges against Dr. Teller and had found no evidence of any impropriety on
the part of Dr. Teller. It said that Dr. Teller, a member of the White House Science
Council, had followed proper procedures in listing his holdings of Helionetics stock
on a government disclosure form and there was no reason to believe there was any connec-
tion between a rise in the price of Helionetics stock in the week prior to President
Reagan's speech recommending an anti-missile defense system and Dr. Teller's advice on
that subject.
THE NEW YORK TIMES WAS SLOW TO FOLLOW UP ON GERTH'S APRIL 28 SMEAR OF DR. TELLER,
but the Soviets were not. The very next day Radio Moscow broadcast worldwide a commentary
based on the story in The Times. Repeating and embellishing Gerth's false statements
and innuendo, Radio Moscow said: "If we dissect a political decision in the U. S., a
political doctrine and so on, we will always see that there are concrete people with
direct connections to the administration, or to some powerful circles, who stand to
benefit from it financially. Depending on how serious a deal is, the financial stake
may range from thousands to millions of dollars. Bribes to Japanese officials in the
Lockheed scandal were in the millions. Edward Teller's payoff from Helionetics' is close
to a million.... Space wars was a hot-selling item on American television, and the admini-
stration has made the first step to make them a reality. It was condemned by millions
around the world and applauded by a handful of those who have already pocketed millions
of dollars in stock of the Helionetics company."
WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES ONLY DARED IMPLY, RADIO MOSCOW BOLDLY MADE EXPLICIT. THE
Times had a duty to correct this atrocious smear and repudiate the use the communists
have made of it. It has failed to do so. AIM decided to take dramatic action. We have
contracted for one full page in the national and international editions of The Wall
Street Journal on May 31 to publish a personal statement by Dr. Teller. This demolishes
The Times story. The headline reads, "I Was NOT the only Victim of The New York Times."
Dr. Teller notes that what The Times did to him is not unique and that many people suffer
from this kind of journalism. It will cost AIM $72,531 to publish this statement. If
you agree with me that it's worth doing, please send a contribution to help defray the cost.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: AIM, PO Box 28390, Washington, D. C. 20005
( ) Enclosed is $ , my tax-deductible contribution to help pay for the ad
in The Wall Street Journal. ( )Please send me a copy of the ad.
Name
Address
City, state, zip
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'the Washington Post Company is whether any editor at
Newsweek who was responsible for this fiasco has
submitted his resignation. If not, does management plan
to dismiss the editors responsible? And if not, why not?"
verdict could stand when there was no evidence to
support it, that would be a bad day for newspapers, and
the overturning of such a verdict is, in my opinion, a
good day for newspapers.
Mrs. Graham: The answer to your question, Arnaud, as
you know, is that no resignations have either been
submitted or asked for. The editors' statements, and I
agree with them, is that the diaries were an interesting
story-that it was an interesting story whether they
were true or false, and, of course, you have to ask the
question, were they forgeries. But the fact that they had
surfaced and they were circulated was made a cover
story. It also ran on the front page of The New York
Times for several days. It ran on the front page of most
other publications, and the decision to make it a cover
story was a decision which I wouldn't disagree with."
Reed Irvine: I'm surprised that you would defend it. It
was obviously a terrible faux pas.... Mr. Maynard
Parker (editor of Newsweek), on the night before the
German government revealed the evidence that these
were terrible forgeries, said on Hodding Carter's
program, "Inside Story," that these diaries were a find of
tremendous historical significance that would make a
great story, and that's why they played it that way.
Obviously they were not a find of tremendous historical
significance, and, as Arnaud said, they were a
tremendous embarrassment to anyone who considered
them in that light. While Newsweek alerted us to the fact
that they weren't authenticated, (Newsweek was)
certainly leaning heavily in that direction.... I think
that Mr. Parker, who put himself way out on that limb,
certainly made himself very vulnerable....I suggest
that maybe you need a new editor of the month at
Newsweek.
Mrs. Graham: We disagree.
Did the Judge Vindicate Post Reporting?
Shareholder Lester Kinsolving, a Washington journal-
ist, noted that after judge Oliver Gasch reversed the $2
million judgment against The Washington Post in the
libel suit brought by William Tavoulareas, the president
of Mobil, executive editor Ben Bradlee said, "We are
delighted our reporting was vindicated. It's a great day
for newspapers." Mr. Kinsolving pointed out that judge
Gasch had said of the story over which Mr. Tavoulareas
sued, "The article falls far short of being a model of fair,
unbiased journalism." He asked if publisher Donald
Graham believed that this was vindication of The Post's
reporting.
Donald Graham: The'I'avoulareas suit is not at an end,
and I want to keep my comments brief. Let cne read you a
couple of sentences from Judge Gasch's opinion. In his
conclusion he said, "As discussed above on this motion
for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, the evidence
of this trial must be construed in the light most
favorable to the plaintiff (Tavoulareas). With this in
mind, the court has thoroughly reviewed the massive
record in this case and has concluded that there is no
evidence to support the jury's verdict." Yes, if it libel
Kinsolving:... Are you proud of that when the judge
rules that it falls far short of being a model of fair,
unbiased journalism, or is that irrelevant, Don?
Donald Graham: The judge said many things in his 23-
page opinion, and I will be very happy ... to supply you
with a copy of it so you can read in full everything that
he said about that story.
After Mr. Kinsolving said Don Graham was ducking the
question, Reed Irvine asked if it wasn't true that judge
Gasch reversed the verdict because he felt the evidence
did not show that The Post had acted with malice, i.e.,
reckless disregard of the truth. That is quite different
from saying the story was accurate. Allan Finberg, the
secretary of the company, confirmed that the judge's
opinion did not address the question of whether the
story "was true or false, defamatory or not."
Scandalmongering by The Washington Post
Mr. Irvine pointed out that three scandals that The Post
had generated between December 1982 and March 1983
had proven to be based on inaccurate information.
These involved the Legal Services Corporation board,
Interstate Commerce Commission member Fred Andre,
and the Canadian propaganda film flap. These three
cases were discussed in the March-B 1983 AIM Report
and had been the subject of a letter AIM had sent to Mrs.
Graham in which we asked why The Post felt it
necessary to rush into print with such inaccurate and
unfair stories. That letter, dated March 8, had not been
answered as of May 13. Mr. Irvine described the cases
discussed in the letter, and added yet another-the
recent spate of stories alleging misconduct by the
Interior Department in leasing coal fields in Wyoming.
The Post had made much of an alleged leak of
information that some said should have been countered
by cancellation of the bidding for the leases. Irvine
pointed out that a story in The Post that morning had
disclosed that there had been no leak. The information
that The Post thought had been leaked had actually been
issued in a public announcement available to all. Irvine
noted that the disclosure of the non-existence of the leak
came in the 18th paragraph of a 20-paragraph story.
Don Graham was asked to respond. After apologizing
for not having replied to AIM's letter, he said: "I just
want to say in general rebuttal that I really don't agree
with Reed's characterization of those stories, and I
would point out that what those stories tend to have in
common is that, that, indeed reporters-that I said at
this meeting a year or two ago, immediately in the
aftermath of The Star going out of business, that we
took very seriously our responsibility to listen to
criticism of us. We had instituted this unusual
ombudsman policy, putting on house someone whose
sole job is to listen to reader complaints of inaccuracy
and unfairness and write about it in the newspaper. And
in each of those three cases, when people wanted to
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criticize our coverage, whether they were syndicated
columnists-we sometimes print letters to the editor of
people submitting guest columns-we went out of our
way to print them. You now characterize this as rebuttal
of the news stories in the first place. In fact, we do our
best to print criticisms of our stories and of our reporters
and of our columns, and we will continue to, but by
printing a letter or a column in commenting on one of our
stories, Reed, we no more-we emphatically do not-."
Asked if that meant he was standing by those original
stories, including the stories about the Legal Services
Corporation board which had been proven incorrect by
two official investigations, Mr. Graham said: "Well, I
will make only one comment on the Legal Services story,
which is that you characterized it as a story that we
rushed into print. Our first day story was coverage of
the Congressional hearing on the Legal Services Corp.,
and the front-page story on that day consisted almost
entirely of quotes from Republican members of
Congress about the behavior of people on the Legal
Services Corporation board."
It is true that The Post story quoted two Republican
congressmen. What it failed to report was the refutation
at the same hearing of their inaccurate statements.
Irvine asked again why The Post reporters couldn't take
the time to get their facts straight before rushing into
print with baseless stories that damaged reputations.
Mrs. Graham responded: "I think we most often and
almost always do check...."
Irvine then suggested that the same thing was now
happening in Central America. He said the Washington
Post reporting had contributed to the communist take=
over of Nicaragua and that it is helping the spread of
communism to other countries. He asked if this is what
The Post wanted. He pointed out that The Post's foreign
editor, Karen DeYoung had taught a course at the
leftwing think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies, in
which she had said, "Most journalists now, most
Western journalists, at least, are very eager to seek out
guerrilla groups, leftist groups, because you assume
they must be the good guys."
Don Graham said this was unfair to The Post's reporters
and to the paper's commentary, which he said tried to
reflect all points of view. "As to the news coverage," he
said, "I refer you no further than the front page of this
morning's paper." This was a reference to a story
headlined, "Salvadoran Guerrillas Execute 18." Irvine
said the story was defensive in tone. That was
exemplified by the use of "execute" rather than
"massacre." The story had explained that the guerrillas
had broken "with their widely publicized humane
treatment of prisoner policy" and had explained that
they couldn't pardon the victims because many of their
own people had died in the fighting. He said the tone of
the story would have been quite different if this had
been an action of the Salvadoran army. He cited as
another example, the reporting last December of the
deaths of 75 Miskito Indian children in Nicaragua from
the point of view of the Sandinista regime, ignoring the
statement issued by the Indian council of elders.
No Blacks and Helping Reds
The Washington Post is strong for affirmative action for
racial minorities and women, but it has no blacks on its
board and only one woman, Mrs. Graham. This was
brought up by Les Kinsolving, who nominated a black,
Robert Maynard, publisher of the Oakland Tribune, for
a seat on the board and challenged the directors to
explain why they did not vote for Mr. Maynard. None
would do so. Corporate secretary Allan Finberg said,
"The question is only burning you, Mr. Kinsolving." Mr.
Irvine said Kinsolving had raised a valid question. He
asked why the board was all white and why Mrs.
Graham was the sole female director. Mrs. Graham said
there was no reason for it, except that no directors had
been added since Mr. Robert S. McNamara, the former
Secretary of Defense, joined the board last year. Mr.
Irvine suggested that they might have given Mr.
McNamara's seat to a well qualified black such as
Andrew Brimmer, a Washington economist who
formerly served on the Federal Reserve Board. Mrs.
Graham said the question would be taken under
consideration.
Irvine asked if Mrs. Graham and the editors of The Post
agreed with British journalist and author Philip
Knightley who has said that if it is true that the
reporting on Vietnam had caused the failure of U. S.
policy in Southeast Asia, the toppling of a president, and
the deplorable conditions that prevail in Indochina
today, that was not too high a price to pay for freedom of
the press. Mrs. Graham said she did not agree that the
reporting was responsible for all that, and she would not
answer a hypothetical question.
Don Graham said: "I can't stand here and be able to
debate individual news stories some months after they
were published." Les Kinsolving suggested that Mrs.
Graham should lift her ban on executive editor Ben
Bradlee's attendance at the annual meeting and let him
respond to questions about news coverage. Laughter
filled the room when Mrs. Graham replied, "Well, I just
think it's dangerous."
Except for Arnaud de Borchgrave's criticism of
Newsweek, none of this was reported by The
Washington Post, the paper that Mrs. Graham says
strives for accuracy, fairness, completeness and truth."
What You Can Do
Write to Mrs. Katharine Graham, Chairman, The
Washington Post Co., Washington, D. C. 20071. Suggest
that she can best prove her dedication to accuracy,
fairness, completeness and truth by dismissing the
editors of Newsweek and The Washington Post, who
have shown their contempt for those standards in their
handling of the forged Hitler diaries and the fake
scandals stirred up by The Post.
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