DESPITE the amazing Fortune poll which showed 26-1/2% of the American people doubting the honesty of our daily newspapers and despite the universal feeling that the press is subsidized and therefore betrays the reader, it is a fact that millions who could do something about this situation are not enough aware of the danger to take any action. All know how powerful the press is and many realize that inasmuch as it is the main force creating public opinion it is, ipso facto, the force which largely directs Congress, the making of laws, taxation, the standard of living, the style of our clothes and our thinking about waging war on Fascism. Nevertheless millions do little or nothing either to fight the harmful influence of a corrupt press or to establish an honest and therefore free press.
The majority of Americans are wage and salary workers. They number 52,000,000 in normal times. Nevertheless it is impossible to name half a dozen newspapers which are at least neutral and impartial in handling the news for these fifty-two millions, and even less which protect and defend them. A vote of labor editors has shown that 92% of them think the entire press is unfair to labor, and other opinion polls taken of labor leaders and writers and editors have declared some 98% of the big city press -- the opinion-forming press -- unfair. And yet labor reads the press which betrays it.
There are many reasons for this, too many and too long to be entered into here, but the point to emphasize is that the facts of the situation are no reason for despair and defeatism. On the contrary, there is such a fast and vast awakening that one is warranted in predicting great and good changes in the near future.
It is important that the labor unions of America are taking the leadership in exposing our commercial corrupt press and laying the foundation for a free press -- the first since colonial times, when any man with a hundred dollars and a pioneer spirit could become a publisher. Here are some bright labor straws in the foul American journalistic winds.
1. The 1942 convention of the C.I.O. in Boston went on record, first for winning the war (as contrasted with the 1942 convention of the National Association of Manufacturers which went all out for Free Enterprise and the 1942 convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association which went all out for profits); it voted for a "Second Front Now," following the victory in North Africa, "to complete destruction of the Nazi forces on the European continent" ; it denounced the fascist appeasement forces still at large in America, and it named the vermin press which follows the "disruptive and appeaser line" as the McCormick-Patterson Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Washington Times-Herald and the nineteen Hearst newspapers. It accused the American press of anti-labor reporting, suppressing Vice-President Wallace's great declaration known as "The Century of the Common Man," suppressing important statements on labor by the President, and "slanting the news to fit the publishers' prejudice." The entire press and publicity committee's report on our venal and corrupt anti-labor press was adopted.
2. The national convention of the International Longshormen's & Warehousemen's Union at its June, 1943, convention in San Francisco went on record on the foremost and dominant subject: winning the war and the part this union can do to speed victory. The commercial press which attacks labor was generally denounced and the columnist Westbrook Pegler and newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst were both denounced as Fifth Columnists who were hindering rather than helping win the war. (May I be permitted to include the following resolution unanimously adopted by the convention: "In Fact, a weekly publication edited by George Seldes, is particularly effective in exposing the suppression and distortions of the appeaser and reactionary press. For this reason it is important that it be given the widest possible circulation.")
3. The American Newspaper Guild, which consists of more than 20,000 men and women who work for the press, the majority in the editorial department, at their 1943 national convention in Boston also made victory the order of the day and decided to watch those newspapers which are hindering rather than aiding in the war against Fascism. The Newspaper Guild resolution pledged it to "expose actions of the press which are disruptive of the war effort" and the Guild will "provide to the Guild Reporter and all other publications in which it can obtain space, material to publish and comment upon the activities of the free press during wartime."
There have always been two parties among the organized newspapermen of the country, one which believed it was wrong to criticize the press -- although fighting it for wage increases and other union rights was right; the other which had a larger outlook and followed in the footsteps of Heywood Broun in relentless criticism of the publishers, editors, owners and corrupters of the newspapers. The Boston convention heard members denounce their own Guild Reporter, official organ, for "slanting the news headlines, inaccuracies of statement, misquotations, injection of editorial opinion and redbaiting" and a resolution instructed the editor to further unity within the Guild, rather than continue his past practices.
The Guild action can make it one of the greatest forces in the nation in a fight for a free press. Its twenty thousand members can supply it with all the evidence in the world to expose the corruption of the newspapers, and a great campaign of exposure must result in at least a little reform, a little less hypocrisy, a little more decency, if not a big step towards fairness.
4. William Green, president of the A. F. of L., made this declaration (published in his American Federationist):
"Recently a bitter campaign of malicious propaganda to poison the public's mind against organized labor has been carried on by the subsidized press which is composed of reactionary daily newspapers controlled, through ownership and advertising, by exploiting profiteers and union-haters. Together with the bourbon politicians, idle rich and anti-labor columnists, they are the real parasites of our country. ... By peddling falsehoods about labor, the subsidized press is creating factionalism, disunity and class hatred. If Hitler were not so busy running away from a victorious Russian army he would take time to pin medals on the editors and columnists who are misleading the public.
"The reactionary editors of the newspapers are doing just what Hitler predicted he could accomplish here through his agents."
5. The most consistent fighters of the corrupt press among the powerful labor papers has been Labor, edited by Edward Keating, and representing the Railroad Brotherhoods.
The facts therefore are that organized labor, 13,000,000 persons, have through their leaders and their unions gone on record as aware that the American press is corrupt, their enemy and betrayer, and that something must be done about it.
How much of an enemy is the press? How deep in Fascism is our press? Let us look at one of the great newspaper chains mentioned in the last chapter, the powerful McCormick-Patterson chain, to see how one family betrays the welfare of many million people.
THE MCCORMICK-PATTERSON-BERLIN AXIS
Declaring war on the United States, Adolf Hitler screamed his hatred and his fascist reasons, arriving at this climax:
"A plan prepared by President Roosevelt has been revealed in the United States, according to which his intention was to attack Germany by 1943 with all the resources at the disposal of the United States.
"Thus our patience has come to the breaking point. ..."
One week earlier, three days before the outrageous Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the Chicago Tribune spread across its front page in the largest type it has ever used, the following story:
"F.D.R.'S WAR PLANS!
"GOAL IS 10 MILLION ARMED MEN;
HALF TO FIGHT IN A.E.F.
"PROPOSES LAND DRIVE BY JULY 1, 1943, TO SMASH NAZIS;
PRESIDENT TOLD OF EQUIPMENT SHORTAGE
"By CHESLY MANLY
"(Copyright 1941 by the Chicago Tribune.)
"Washington, D.C., Dec. 3 -- A confidential report prepared by the joint Army and Navy high command by direction of President Roosevelt calls for American Expeditionary Forces aggregating 5,000,000 men for a final land offensive against Germany and her satellites. It contemplates total armed forces of 10,045,658 men.
"One of the few existing copies of this astonishing document, which represents decisions and commitments affecting the destinies of peoples throughout the civilized world, became available to The Tribune today.
"It is a blueprint for total war on a scale unprecedented in at least two oceans and three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. ...
"July 1, 1943, is fixed as the date for the beginning of the final supreme effort by American land forces to defeat the mighty German army in Europe.
"In the meantime ... gradual encirclement of Germany by the establishment of military bases. ...
"The war prospectus is dated Sept. 11, 1941, and was prepared by the Army and Navy Joint Board, which is the supreme command of the United States, in response to a letter addressed to Secretary of War Stimson by President Roosevelt. ..."
This is the document to which Hitler referred when he declared war. The document was furnished to Herr Hitler and to 5,000,000 people in twelve midwestern states who read the million copies the Chicago Tribune prints daily, by Colonel McCormick.
Technically this was not an act of treason.
However, McCormick, being an army man, knows better than any layman that the publication of the secret war plans of any nation is right next to treason, if not treason itself.
Three days before Pearl Harbor the Chicago Tribune published the confidential U.S. Army plan, but the owner escaped trial for treason. -- Chicago Daily Tribune, The World's Greatest Newspaper, 2 CENTS, PAY NO MORE, FINAL, December 4, 1942 -- F.D.R.'S WAR PLANS! -- GOAL IS 10 MILLION ARMED MEN; HALF TO FIGHT IN AEF -- Proposes Land Drive by July 1, 1943, to Smash Nazis; President Told of Equipment Shortage.
Colonel McCormick, however, was too interested in fighting the New Deal and working with fascist appeasers to care whether or not he betrayed his country. He published one of the many war plans which his country had made to protect itself. (McCormick knew only too well that every nation, ours included, has plans made years or months in advance for every sort of invasion of every country in the world; it would be criminal folly for a general staff not to have them; and that this plan which he betrayed was one of many prepared to deal with any future situation and not a plot to enter the war and attack Germany.) Said Secretary Stimson:
"What would you think of an American General Staff which in the present condition of the world did not investigate and study every conceivable type of emergency which may confront this country and every possible method of meeting the emergency?
"What do you think of the patriotism of a man or a newspaper that would take those confidential studies and make them public to the enemies of this country?
"While their publication doubtless will be a gratification to our potential enemies as a possible source of impairment and embarrassment to our national defense, the chief evil of their publication is the revelation that there should be among us any group of persons so lacking in appreciation of the danger that confronts the country and so wanting in loyalty and patriotism to their government, that they would be willing to publish such papers."
This, however, does not explain why the government failed to take any action whatever. Obviously someone had betrayed America. Obviously if someone had sold this document to a Nazi agent he would have been arrested for treason. But Colonel McCormick, who supplied Hitler and Hirohito with one of our war plans, went scot free.
The American press was bribed with free cable and radio service by Mussolini. The Chicago Tribune asked for the bribe. Here is the documentary evidence.
In August, 1942, the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and Washington Times-Herald -- the three McCormick family newspapers -- were on trial for betraying secrets to Japan in their reports of the Coral Sea battle. They were found not guilty. They had published a list of ships participating, they quoted as a source for their information some officials of the U.S. Navy, and they published the news under a Washington dateline.
In pleading not guilty to aiding the enemy the Tribune made the confession that it had faked at least parts of the story; the Washington dateline was false because the story was written in Chicago; the list of battleships which participated was just made up out of a book on ships; and the statement that the information came from U.S. Navy officials was just 100 per cent a lie.
Congressman Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania said to the House of Representatives that Joseph Medill Patterson (News) and Eleanor Patterson (Times-Herald) were "America's No. 1 and No. 2 exponents of the Nazi propaganda line ... doing their best to bring about a fascist victory." When Joe Patterson replied with an editorial headed "Congressman Holland: You Are a Liar," Holland made a list of all the defeatist fascist news items, editorials and cartoons in the McCormick-Patterson press and concluded: "Daily these publishers rub at the morale of the American people. Daily they sow suspicion. Daily they preach that we are in a hopeless struggle. Daily they wear at the moral fiber of the people, softening it, rotting it, preparing us for defeat."
A HUNDRED YEARS OF FALSEHOOD
In addition to following the Nazi line, the Chicago Tribune has a line of its own, and has followed it for almost a hundred years. It is the policy of using falsehood for its own editorial purposes -- and it started on this career three-quarters of a century before Hitler in Mein Kampf wrote his amazing paragraphs on the value of the colossal lie.
No matter which side the Tribune has been on, it has not hesitated to fake the news to favor its viewpoint. It has been on the side of general welfare -- but that was long ago. In 1858 it was for Lincoln. It fought slavery. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates it was so partisan to Lincoln that it garbled and distorted Douglas' speeches, and printed Lincoln's honestly. (Source: Edgar Lee Masters, Tale of Chicago, page 132.)
In 1864, after Joseph Medill had helped elect Lincoln, he headed a delegation protesting the draft. Lincoln was very angry with the Tribune owner. He said to him: "You, Medill, you are acting like a coward. You and your Tribune have had more influence than any paper in the Northwest in making this war. You can influence great masses, and yet you cry to be spared, at a moment when your cause is suffering." (Source: Ida M. Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 149.)
And although Medill fought human slavery, he did his best to encourage wage slavery. He fought the labor movement, the eight-hour day, unions, and every attempt to better the life of the common man. When hard times came Joseph Medill published an editorial favoring the poisoning of the unemployed. That was his idea of solving the crisis of 1877.
From 1873 through the panic years unemployment increased, thousands of men began to roam the country, looking for work. The wealthy were scared. Chicago passed a Vagrant Law, making all unemployed subject to arrest. A reader asked the Chicago Tribune what to do with the barefooted and ragged who came begging for food. The reader called the unemployed tramps and also accused them of theft. The Tribune editor replied (July 12, 1877):
"The [Vagrant] Law, while an improvement on the old one, is not of much use for suburban districts, where officers are scarce and Justices or Peace hard to find. The simplest plan, probably, where one is not a member of the Humane Society, is to put a little strychnine or arsenic in the meat and other supplies furnished the tramps. This produces death within a comparatively short period of time, is a warning to other tramps to keep out of the neighborhood. ..."
The faking of news to harm labor, which began in the 1850's, is continued by McCormick to the present day. The Tribune has fought organizing labor, from the Knights of Labor to the A. F. of L. to the C.I.O.
The greatest proof in modern history that the press publishes tremendous lies for the purpose of smashing labor was the treatment of the Memorial Day massacre in Chicago in 1937. It is true that when the Paramount news reel -- which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch forced into the open after attempts at suppression -- showed that labor was entirely innocent, the police entirely to blame for the coldblooded murder of ten peaceful strikers, many newspapers did print this fact. But not the Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune stuck to its lies after the proof was given to the world. It stuck to its lies after the newspapermen who were present at the massacre testified before a Congressional investigating commission that the police were murderers, the strikers blameless. The Tribune ran an editorial saying the massacre was justified because property must be protected. Although the victims of the police were shot in the back, although the newsreel shows the police starting the shooting without reason, and murdering men who were doing nothing but watching, the Tribune editorial yelled "reds."
The Ku Klux Klan was in its second childhood in 1921. It had millions of members -- its peak was about 6,000,000 before its decline began three or four years later. The Chicago Tribune was one of the few big papers which openly favored the Klan. In 1921 George Bernard Shaw canceled a visit to America. He wrote:
"I have no intention of going to prison with Debs or taking my wife to Texas, where Ku Klux Klan mobs snatch white women from out of hotel verandas and tar and feather them."
The Chicago Tribune suppressed the name of the Ku Klux Klan. Its version reads just "mobs."
This was on April 19. On April 16 the Tribune had carried a full page ad (netting the owners thousands of dollars) signed by Imperial Wizard Simmons of the K.K.K. and saying:
"The Knights of the K.K.K. is a law-abiding, legally chartered, standard, fraternal order, designed to teach and inculcate the purest ideals of American citizenship, with malice towards none and justice to every citizen regardless of race, color or creed."
When readers protested that the ad was a lie, that the Klan attacked Catholics, Jews and Negroes, and was barred to them, the Tribune replied (Aug. 27) that the old K.K.K. had been created because of intolerable conditions and "danger of Negro domination," and although evils were committed in its name, it served an important end, while "contributing one of the romantic episodes of our history." The new K.K.K., continued the Tribune, was virtually the old. "All the great fraternal orders," it added, "which accomplish so much quiet good ... make use of this natural liking for mysterious rites and secret ties, and the new Klan will hardly be denied the right to adopt the same policy." At this time the K.K.K. had already been accused of murders, and much terrorism. "The head of the order repudiates them," concluded the Tribune.
On occasion the Chicago Times, the Madison Capital-Times and La Follette's Progressive have offered rewards of $1,000 and $5,000 to anyone who could prove that certain items in the Tribune were not lies. The rewards were not claimed, the Tribune did not sue for libel. On the other hand the Tribune, caught lying, did not attempt to explain or apologize.
The Times, Aug. 28, 1936, offered $5,000 "if the Tribune or any other newspaper can prove to the satisfaction of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the A.N.P.A. that the Tribune dispatch from Donald Day datelined Riga, Latvia, August 8, with its heading, is true." The fake story said that "Moscow has ordered 'reds' in the United States to back Roosevelt against Landon." Four years later Col. McCormick, in a nationwide radio speech, again repeated the Donald Day story. (WOR, February 15, 1940, 10 P.M.)
On October 29, 1938, the Progressive offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove that Washington correspondent Chesly Manly's story headlined "New Deal Hit in Red Inquiry" was not false. In that story the Tribune said "'La Follette's so-called inquiry [into denial of civil liberties and rights of labor] was conceived by John L. Lewis, dictator of the C.I.O. and political ally of Mr. Roosevelt." The Tribune heading using the word "red" was a smear; the story, the Progressive said, was a lie, and it would donate $1,000 to the Tribune charity fund if it was proven not to be a lie. The Tribune did not reply.
It is not often that a President of the United States calls a paper or a news service a liar, but it has happened more frequently of late. President Roosevelt has denounced Hearst, Roy Howard's United Press and the Chicago Tribune for their lies used for political purposes against him and his party.
On August 26, 1941, the President at his press conference denounced several stories ''as examples of the vicious rumors, distortions of facts, or just plain dirty falsehoods." The cause of the outburst was a Chicago Tribune story signed Walter Trohan appearing in the Washington Times-Herald. This story was in line with the Tribune policy on Lend-Lease.
No American newspaper outside the Hearst and Howard chains has fought labor so viciously as the Tribune. Not satisfied with smearing the C.I.O., distorting the news, using headlines, editorials, bias, perversion against labor, the Tribune also resorted to falsehood. On November 27, 1938, the Tribune had the following sensational headline:
"C.I.O. STRANGLES SAN FRANCISCO, INDUSTRIES DIE"
This, one of the many sensational stories blaming everything on labor, appeared on the front page, continuing to page 4. The main "fact" revealed, after the usual buncombe and propaganda and wild false generalities, was that the situation created by the C.I.O. auto workers was so bad that the Chevrolet plant moved away to Los Angeles.
A.L. Kennedy, manager, industrial department, Oakland Chamber of Commerce, protested this Tribune lie. He wrote :
"In the first place, the Chevrolet automobile assembly plant is not located in San Francisco; it is located in Oakland. In the second place and most important, it did not move to Los Angeles; it is still here. Furthermore, it has never had to operate under strike conditions. ... In fairness to this community a retraction is in order."
After lying on pages 1 and 4, the Tribune printed exactly 2-1/4 inches of Kennedy's protest as a letter to the editor! (January 4, 1939.)
Another favorite subject on which not only the Tribune but many more respected papers lied frequently, is W.P.A. Every reactionary pro-fascist anti-labor paper, and notably Hearst fought civilian aid. The Tribune naturally was not content with posed pictures of workmen leaning on shovels. It came out with two weeks of falsehood of which the following is a typical heading:
"GRAFT, FRAUDS, THEFT;
"W.P.A. REEKS WITH CORRUPTION"
Howard O. Hunter, assistant W.P.A. administrator, invited nineteen Chicago newspapermen to his office and handed them a twenty-five-page statement proving all fourteen stories in the Tribune false. He said the Tribune engaged in "deliberate, vicious, and wholesale lying." The pictures showing lazy men were taken at a private sewer-digging job. One picture had been changed between editions because its background showed many men at work. The Tribune writer had been discharged from W. P. A. for drunkenness. But Hunter did not blame the reporter or Managing Editor Robert M. Lee. He called Publisher McCormick "vicious," and "irrational." Said Hunter:
"Every statement published by the Tribune was found to be false. Ordinarily we would not dignify such accusations made by the Chicago Tribune by going to the trouble of answering them, because any intelligent person in Chicago knows that such charges have been faked and trumped up by the Tribune for years.
"But when column after column is pawned off on the public as news, none of which has any foundation, when columns are used to falsely attack individual unemployed citizens and to misrepresent to the public the work they are doing, it is time that the public is acquainted with the truth surrounding the publication of these articles."
The Tribune, of course, printed not a word about the Hunter documentation, but its brasscheck polisher, the cartoonist Carey Orr, continued to draw pictures slandering W.P.A.
It is significant that in the newspaper profession everyone knows that the Chicago Tribune is the most unfair and least reliable paper in the country, and many trustworthy journalists have openly accused the Tribune of lying.
The Washington press corps is the elite of the profession. Most of its members are highly paid. Some of them have the same financial interests as their employers; some lead a double life, writing the propaganda to suit their owners but retaining a free and liberal mind. The latter are certainly not brasscheck polishers of the Pegler variety; they are not prostitutes. Proof of this was given when Leo Rosten took numerous polls in which these journalists told the truth.
Rosten asked America's leading press corps to vote for the "least fair and reliable" papers in the country, and here is the result in the order of their badnes :
1. The Hearst papers: New York Journal-American, Mirror; Albany Times-Union, Boston Record, American, Advertiser; Baltimore News-Post, American; Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Chicago Herald- American, Milwaukee News-Sentinel, Detroit Times, San Francisco Examiner, Call-Bulletin; Oakland Post- Enquirer, Los Angeles Examiner, Herald-Express; San Antonio Light, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
2. Chicago Tribune.
3. Los Angeles Times.
4. Scripps-Howard chain: New York World-Telegram, Cleveland Press, Pittsburgh Press, San Francisco News, Indianapolis Times, Columbus Citizen, Cincinnati Post, Kentucky Post, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Denver News, Birmingham Post, Memphis Press-Scimitar, Memphis Commercial Appeal, Washington News, Houston Press, Ft. Worth Press, Albuquerque Tribune, El Paso Herald-Post, Evansville Press.
It is to be noted that, of the three big and powerful chains, two are listed (first and fourth worst) and the third, the McCormick-Patterson chain, has its leading paper listed as the worst single paper in America.
Hearst papers -- chief peddlers of Nazi propaganda. -- "Now is Turn of Other Nations to Meet Germany's 'Desire for Peace' -- Rosenberg:; "Italy Glories in Militarism, Says Duce; 'Pacifists the Worst Enemies of Peace'"; "Reich Training Youth to Build Up Air Force but Not for War -- Goering"
Of the ninety-three Washington correspondents who were in this poll, eighty-seven voted the Hearst papers the worst, seventy-one voted against the Chicago Tribune; next were Los Angeles Times with twenty-five votes and the Howard chain with thirteen. The Scripps-Howard papers had once been the leading liberals of the country, and it is true that Roy Howard still permits certain among them to remain so. Not all Howard papers are as filthy (under daily orders) as the papers of the Hearst chain.
Rosten also took a vote on what is the best newspaper in America. Ninety-nine Washington journalists took part and the Chicago Tribune received only one vote. In other words, it was last. But inasmuch as the Tribune has a large staff, and inasmuch as several Tribune writers participated in the vote, it is indeed heartening to note that the Tribune's own men have no illusions about it being a decent newspaper.
The situation was similar with votes affecting the Hearst news services. Although several Hearst men voted, the total which believed the agency was best, more liberal, or more reliable was less than the total of Hearst men participating.
The voting is significant. When the day comes for chains of free newspapers -- a press which will deal fairly with labor, a press which will not be afraid to fight Fascism at home as well as abroad -- they will be able to call upon the newspaper workers, the reporters and, in many instances, the noted columnists who work for the corrupt press but who are not corrupted by either the money they make or the company they have to keep. For every Benjamin De Casseres, Paul Mallon, Westbrook Pegler, Frederic Woltman, William Philip Simms, John O'Donnell, Chesly Manly, whose mouth is black with the polish off the shoes of Hearst and Howard and McCormick and Patterson (as Heywood Broun so often said), there are many better men who may be working for the same corrupters of our free press but who have not been polishing the fast disappearing brass check of the ancient profession.