Media Smears: One Man's Experiences
Sowell, Thomas
Thomas Sowell MEDIA SMEARS: ONE MAN'S EXPERIENCES A noted economist fires back. I n the movie, Absence of Malice,'lives are damaged and even destroyed by irresponsible reporting--and the...
...The fact is, I was losing in every way until my life was changed by the Korean War, the draft, and the GI Bill--none of which 1 can take.credit for...
...U.S...
...It was begun-in 1978 and completed before the 1980 elections, which is to say, before t h e r e was a Reagan Administration...
...Yet they have all been accused of seeking personal gain or political advancement, or of being too affluent to understand the ghetto...
...Six critics re-examine the work and teputa...
...When Denton phqned me for verification, I told him that t h e r e was already enough misinformation in the world, without his printing such a story...
...The lady herself played this theme to the hilt, saying that it was a "use of South African apartheid concepts of racial gradations, combined with an exotic infusion of Marxist class warfare notions...
...Still no Vernon Jordan...
...For weeks an avalanche of mail and telephone calls came to my office and my one s e c r e t a r y . We struggled day in and day out to get our regular work done, to organize a conference that was scheduled, and to proofread the galleys for my book, Ethnic America--all the while being interrupted every few minutes by phone calls from people wanting to join the nonexistent organization, or from reporters wanting a detailed blueprint of its far-flung operations, as reported in the Washington Post...
...A member of my family on the East Coast read the Jet story and became alarmed...
...What I discovered often conflicted with prevailing views in the media and among politicians and civil rights leaders...
...It would of course be a ridiculous piece of advice, for luck was an important element, and there is no way to emulate luck...
...Then 1 s t a r t e d going through the indexes of my books...
...I had declined offers of presidential appointments in previous administrations, and saw no reason to change now...
...Real" Meanings When there is nothing that can even be lifted out of context to support a damaging interpretation, some writers resort to reporting your "real" meaning...
...But the problem is much bigger than me or my ideas...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982 19 According to book reviewer Paul Buhle in the Nation, the real purpose of Ethnic America was to o f f e r "economic and historical justification" for "gutting social s e r v i c e s . " Nowhere in the book is any social service mentioned as requiring reduction...
...Editor Meg Greenfield of the Washington Post tried repeatedly to get me to water down or eliminate various criticisms--including that of Patricia Harr i s - i n a pair of articles I wrote for that paper...
...It has been a decade since l was a registered member of any party: and then I was a Democrat...
...In short, the process of airing different perspectives is even more important than the question of which is closest to the truth...
...People are constantly telling me how surprised they are at reading something 1 have written, because it is so d i f f e r e n t from what they have been led to believe by the media...
...Columnist Carl Rowan likewise said, "Sowell parrots the Reaganites," and included me among the "supplicants" for Administration largesse...
...Even this position I gave up after one meeting, when it became clear that the combination of jet lag and long meetings created medical problems for me...
...We think THE ROCKFORD PAPERS new six...
...If facts about issues are to be subordinated to speculations'ab6ut personal motives, then at least ~ ~he'~tandards can be the same for those on opposite sides of the issues...
...Eventually exhaustion caught up with us...
...I know...
...They are ideal for smears...
...It is not even a question of which view is right...
...5 E. L DOCl"OROW...
...Instead, let me submit some examples to the court of public opinion--some merely irresponsible, and others more vicious...
...And once certain distortions are repeated often enough, they become " f a c t s " to many readers and even to other writers...
...In real life as well, the most damaging, unsupported, and inaccurate s t a t e m e n t s about an individual can be written and broadcast coast to coast, without the law's offering any meaningful recourse...
...For example, I discovered that group differences in income had many causes, some of them with much greater impact than employer discrimination...
...I challenged her to find a single misstatement of fact in my articles, but she complained instead of the harshness of what was said...
...But some newspapers would not give up the idea that I was part of the Reagan Administration, even after it was public knowledge that I was not...
...In reality, I have never been a Republican, nor even addressed a Republican gathering...
...Joseph P Schwartz examines the books of Updike...
...Economist Walter Williams of George Mason University wrote a prize-winning article on numerous government programs that harm minorities--including some programs, such as the minimum wage law, that are ostensibly intended to be beneficial...
...These included a feature article I wrote on I.Q...
...One of my associates reported his own speculations to Denton, who turned them into " f a c t s " - - a n d headlines--about my plans...
...The closest thing to factual evidence that he had was a newspaper interview in which a n o t h e r r e p o r t e r had asked where my personal "stubbornness and isolation" came from, and I suggested that these t r a i t s were probably i n h e r i t e d , since some of my relatives had similar personalities...
...Not as far as the press was concerned...
...Our writing on such issues as the Cold War...
...False statements in the press can have serious consequences, even when they are not smears...
...Patricia Roberts Harris, though black, grew up in a middle-class home and in college belonged to a sorority too snobbish to admit dark-skinned women...
...Stephen Macaulay studies this prolific author of best sellers...
...In the May issue, V~rginian James J. Thompson...
...The only partisan gathering I have ever addressed was an informal luncheon sponsored by the Libertarian Party...
...Some media statements have been miles off base without being either favorable or unfavorable...
...Her worst suspicions seemed to be confirmed when she phoned my home while I was out...
...What I did not expect was that the facts would be so widely and totally disregarded, and that so much of the response would consist of purely personal attacks on me--and that the press would apply a double standard in the controversies that followed...
...Clair Drake in the Palo Alto FP'eekly, the real purpose is to "put forward a conservative agenda"though no agenda at all is put forth in the book--a fact which o t h e r reviewers (including those in Time and Newsweek) complained about...
...Even the most advanced nations in Western Civilization-including the u n i t e d S t a t e s - - b u r n e d women alive as witches within the past three centuries...
...What I actually said about my own career was written a decade ago in Black Education: Myths and Tragedies: It would be premature at b e s t and presumptuous at worst to attempt to draw sweeping or definitive conclusions from my personal experiences...
...At more than one university during the 1960s, I lived in cramped, rented quarters while "militant" black academics owned spacjous homes...
...For one thing, they appeared much too quickly for Meg Greenfield to have engaged in weeks of agonized discussions and hand-wringing...
...And yet a lawsuit would probably do nothing but waste months of my time, at the end of which the smear artists could slip out through one of the many loopholes --and proclaim themselves vindicated and their charges substantiated...
...Lem Tucker chose instead to broadcast sensational rhetoric coast to coast...
...Why not join our growlng list of readers) Send your coupon in today so you don't miss a" single issue of our Send to: THE ROCKFORD PAPERS 934 North Main Rockford, IL 61103 [ ] Enclosed ~s $7 O0 Start my oneyear subscnp bon to THE ROCK, FORD PAPERS v~th your May ~ssue on William Styron -- and ~u~h me your March issue on Kurt Vonnegut O Enclosed =s S6 (30 Stall my one.year (SLX br monthly issues) subscnplion to rl-IE ROCi'(FORD PAPERS with your May i~sue on ~vdham Stgron [ ] Bill me for $7 00...
...Professor of psychiatry Gloria Poweil of UCLA published a massive study which failed to show any clear pattern of psychological gains by black children who had been "integrated" in the public schools, despite what was widely expected, promised, or claimed...
...I wish I knew who made those promises, because l h a v e not seen a penny materialize...
...Those of us who questioned .that whole approach were at best tolerated...
...We all lose when we stifle the diversities of opinion which alone give us some hope of understanding complex and difficult social issues...
...Can the author of The Coup and A Month of Sundays be taken as a morally responsible novelist or only as an astute hterary stylist...
...Even the truth may be an incomplete t r u t h , and need additional perspectives that lie beyond one person's vision...
...Even in t o d a y ' s changed climate of opinion, a number of blacks at the other end.of the political spectrum make several times my income...
...No Vernon Jordan...
...The Baton Rouge Community Leader called me "the most prominent Black policy maker," even though l never made a policy in my life...
...In the same vein, David Herbert Donald declared in the New York Times that "Mr...
...For example, in December 1980, Was/s...
...Finally I was asked, declined politely, and figured that was the end of that...
...Yet innuendoes about selling out were directed toward me, but never toward them...
...Having heard nothing about hospitalization from me, she concluded that I must be so gravely ill that the family was keeping the news from her because of her own serious heart condition...
...Where feelings run deep, rationality has often broken down...
...Dorothy Giiliam of the llTasbtngton Post was the source of this charge, later repeated by others...
...scores as blacks when they lived under conditions similar to blacks, and cited massive amounts of data I had collected on the subject...
...We still fell behind...
...I could not for the life of me remember mentioning Vernon Jordan, much less at, tacking him...
...Opinions that I had been expressing for more than a decade were now suddenly depicted as opportunistic statements echoing the Reagan Administration in order to get me a job in Washington...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982...
...In o r d e r to try to keep up with our regular work despite incessant interruptions, my secretary and I began coming in to work earlier and earlier in the morning, and leaving later and later at night...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982 17 Ironically, my staying home led to a n o t h e r fictitious story...
...It is a matter of public record when an organization is incorporated, so anyone can check the incorporation records for that week--or any o t h e r week--and find no "Black Alternatives" organization incorporated by Thomas Sowell...
...There I pointed out that European immigrants had the same l.Q...
...in the New York Times Magazine of March 27, 1977...
...Although the organization was nonexist e n t , the results of the story were quite real...
...says: "1 always benefit from reading The Roc~ord Papers which seems to me to include some of the best conservative writing of recent times "" It's the kind of writing that earned us the Freedoms Foundation's 1981 George Washington Honor Medal...
...The blatant facts of the situation seemed not to make the slightest difference...
...What I have urged is that other disadvantaged people be allowed more options--school vouchers as just one example--and less advice from "experts...
...Even now, l have no hard information that anybody in the Administration has ever read it...
...I n the movie, Absence of Malice,'lives are damaged and even destroyed by irresponsible reporting--and the law offers no real protection...
...Nor did it seem to occur to critics that no one sells out to the lowest bidder...
...No such standards applied to the many articles which the Post then printed denouncing my position...
...But you would be wrong...
...Some papers said S e c r e t a r y of Labor, others Secretary of Education, or of Housing and Urban Development...
...The most they could come up with was my unpaid position as a member of a committee that metl occasionally, had no powers, and could only offer outside advice to the Administration...
...Apparently, it all depends on whose ox is being gored...
...For example, l have been repeatedly identified as a Republican, on television and in newspapers...
...A writer in the Sacramento Observer depicted an article of mine as showing a "soul sold for a little money...
...Jet magazine r e p o r t e d that I was hospitalized in Palo Alto...
...ington Post reporter Herbert Denton told me that an NAACP official had called me by the vile epithet, " a house n i g g e r . " When I threw the charge back in his face, the headline in Demon's story proclaimed my attack on the NAACP as "house niggers...
...Are their novels literature or feminist bro...
...nc~-io-new realons to ~ THE ROCK]fORD PAPERS...
...Anyone who wanted the facts about my position could easily have found them...
...Lee Daniels in the New York Times called me "the Administration's favored black spokesman," even though l had never spoken a word for the Adminstration, had gone for months without saying anything publicly on any subj~.ct, and had turned down innumerable requests for interviews...
...She took a week off...
...Demonstrably false statements have been made about me in the media and positions attributed to me that are the direct opposite of what I have said for years in my own published writings...
...The behind-the-scenes story of this controversy was more of the same double standard...
...Among the many false charges in the media, the one that most piqued my curiosity was that I had "castigated" Vernon Jordan...
...On January 31, 1981, the Pittsburgh Courier said: "Like flies chasing a garbage truck, opportunists of all stripes (and colors) are scrambling to align themselves with the new Reagan a d m i n i s t r a t i o n . " Among these were "Thomas Sowell of the notorious Hoover Institution...
...Yet the press has seldom used the same standards when jtldging their critics...
...What is far more important is that an atmosphere of character assassination is not one in which there is a Widespread clash of opposing views...
...It would be especially unwarranted to draw Horatio Alger conclusions, that perseverence and/or ability "win out" despite obstacles...
...When I reported these facts, there was a storm of outrage in the press--and claims that I was attacking Mrs...
...It so happened that I grew up in such poverty that I was eight years old before 1 lived in a home with hot running water...
...As one who has taken controversial stands on various issues, I have been the target of a smear campaign for more than a year...
...He had never heard of any such attack either, and advised me to "pay it no mind...
...Carl Rowan's innuendoes that people were taking certain public positions on issues to get political appointments for themselves centered on two academics (Williams and myself) who have never been politically appointed to any job--though Rowan himself has...
...Sowetl is really less interested in the past than in the present and the future," even though the book is a history, with almost no discussion of current policies...
...If later Carl Rowan wanted to say that I did more harm to blacks than Quisling did to his fellowNorwegians under Nazi rule, the Post was ready to print it...
...Moreover, even within the academic world, there was far more money to be made, over the past 20 years, saying the direct opposite of what l said...
...A close look at the data also showed that school busing and "affirmative action" policies not only failed to achieve their goals, but generally ended up making the disadvantaged even more disadvantaged...
...chures...
...After her many phone calls, weeks of delay, and heated words between us, Meg Greenfield finally agreed to print what I had said--but with a weary air of being much put upon...
...Our conference was cancelled, and other commitments and deadlines had to be left unmet...
...18 THI-~AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1,)82 Personal Attacks and Double Standards For much-of the decade of the 1970s, I engaged in research on American ethnic groups...
...The New York Times, for example, asked NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks whether Walter Williams's middleclass status and income did not undermine Williams's positions on racial issues, without ever considering whether Hooks's own background was not far more middle class than Williams's or his current income far h i g h e r - - a n d depertdent on the very programs he advocated...
...Is he a great writer or a great fabrication...
...Real" meanings require no evidence whatever, and can never be disproved...
...How one can be a spokesman without speaking remains a mystery...
...I. have no false modesty about having seized the opportunity and worked to make it pay off, but there is no way to avoid the fact that there first had to be an opportunity to seize...
...Several things are remarkable about this group of people...
...Some said Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers...
...In the Washington Post of February 5, 1981, Herbert Denton reported that I had formed an organization "which was incorporated this week in California under the name Black Alternatives Association, Inc...
...part sedes will give you six reasons to put us on your permanent reading list...
...Three of his most recent books are reviewed later in these pages by Antony Flew...
...But surely it is time we learned from history that the particular victims and scapegoats are not the only losers in an atmosphere of witch-hunting...
...In it we try to undo what the liberal culture has done to contemporary American literature...
...Not a single policy is recommended in Ethnt+c America, which is a history book...
...Large lecture fees, foundation grants, directorships ofminority programs (and of major corporations) went to those who shouted and shook their fists and demanded special programs...
...But it takes relatively few individuals to keep a smear campaign going...
...According to St...
...Is his wnbng an attempt to create literature or does he simply put together attractive ideological tracts...
...This organization never existed, even though the Washington Post story was carried coast to coast in other newspapers...
...Again, the media never question wheth~:r what they say might be influenced by what they receive from the very programs they champion...
...newspapers, two magazines, and various lectures...
...Finally, I wrote to Vernon Jordan...
...But again, a fictitious story had real consequences...
...I was at a local pool, swimming 500 yards while supposedly "hospitalized...
...Stephen Tanner takes a look at the author of Ragtime...
...Moreover, the time pressures of the media and the need for excitement to attract readers and viewers promote the creation of stereotypes, bogeymen, and scapegoats...
...It i s a wai'ning that is as timely today as it was centuries ago...
...According to a broadcast by Tucker on October 13, 1981, my viewpoint "seems to place him in the school that believes that maybe most blacks are genetically inferior to w h i t e s . " For a charge as sweeping and inflammatory as geneti~inferiority of a race--my race--you would think there would have to be some speck of hard evidence...
...Implicit in much that is said about the emotional subject of race and ethnicity is the presumption that no honest disagreement is possible on the orthodoxy promoted by the civil rights leaders and liberal politicians...
...For ten years, l have repeatedly and extensively argued against the genetic inferiority t h e o r y - - i n four books, two Thomas Sowell is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...Wrong " F a c t , " The most staggering of many false charges was made by CBS correspondent Lem Tucker on that network's morning television program...
...Various black writers have emerged in recent years to challenge some of the prevailing assumptions of the civil rights establishment and have encountered personal attacks rath'er than substantive criticism of their work...
...Harris for being lightskinned...
...I have not been the only target of such unsupported innuendoes or such double standards...
...Actually, I have not been hospitalized in more than a decade, and do not even know the location of a hospital in Palo Alto...
...No single individual or set of "leaders" has a monopoly on understanding...
...Neither harshness, nor irrelevance, nor inaccuracy stopped them from being published...
...Betsy Clarke writes on perhaps the most-hyped contemporary authoresses ~JOHN UPDIKE...
...L KURT VONNEGUT...
...Unsupported Insinuations After the 1980 election, stories began to a p p e a r in many newspapers that I was going to become a Cabinet member in the Reagan Administration...
...You would have to dig quite a ways into the story to find out who attacked and who replied...
...Some of these facts were surprising to me, and forced me to change some of my own thinking...
...None of those who.wrote this way' ever found it n e c e s s a r y to show where 1 had e v e r gotten a dime from the Reagan Administration...
...They are academics with neither a financial nor a political stake in one conclusion rather than another...
...reflects upon the conflict between the guilt and the ambitions of a writer who turned his back on the South...
...The really ugly insinuations concern money...
...Lem Tucker on the CBS morning program had me claiming "that he alone, almost without bootstraps, pulled himself out of the ghetto through Harvard and the University of Chicago...
...By and large, the press bought her version...
...If they had no specific facts but only vague innuendoes about " s e l l i n g o u t , " that was fine...
...What was the basis for the Washington Post story...
...If someone wanted to refer to my "blackface sociology" or to my nonexistent castigation of Vernon Jordan, t h a t was fine...
...Nathaniel Jones of the NAACP publicly questioned whether Derrick Bell was not trying for personal career gain by opposing busing, though in fact the real gains were to be made by taking Jones's position-which gained him a federal judgeship through appointment by President Carter, while Bell remains ah academic...
...g/hat money was of course never specified...
...If I were going to let smears stop me, I would have stopped years ago...
...Apparently he disagreed...
...How one gets from this to genetic inferiority is a mystery only Lem Tucker can solve...
...They arrived at their conclusions by research, independently of each other, and without a common social or political position...
...Judges have so watered down the laws on slander and libel that only in special cases can you nail those who are being irresponsible, vindictive, or even outright liars...
...My doctor put me on medication and I stayed home for two weeks...
...Some friends and I were thinking of establishing an organization, but its specific activities had not been worked out, nor any money collected, nor an "office rented or stationery printed...
...Money also figured prominently in the Washington Post story about my nonexistent organization--S100,000 which unnamed corporations and foundations had "promised" to contribute...
...The series is called "The Monumental Literature of Dwarfs...
...But since no one in the new administration had asked me, it would have been a gratuitous insult to the incoming President to have said so...
...GORE VIDAL Is the author of Myra Breckinndge a brilliant observer of manners-as the liberal cntics want us to believe -- or just an astute muckraker seeking the annihilation of the conventions that form the rudiments of dvi}ization...
...In a similar vein, a book reviewer in the New York Times called my Etbmc America a book "to be feared--as a signpost pointing to the probable future direction of the present national administration regarding minorities...
...A later story by Denton called me "vituperative" in my "attacks" on the civil rights organizations...
...There is an irony for me in the constant emphasis on money...
...Sociologist William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago produced a widely read study that questioned whether racial economic differences today were nearly as much due to racial discrimination as in the past...
...Is he merely a pale shadow of Faulkner...
...Among the "'real" meanings discerned was one presented by Carl Rowan in such a way that unwary readers might think it was a direct quote from me about my career: "I did all this on my own, with hard work, so 1 d o n ' t want government to give any lazy bastard anything...
...I of course knew all along that I was not about to go to Washington for any job...
...What makes him so covetous of the New York cultural establishment's approval...
...dollars only...
...Former civil rights attorney Derrick Bell, now dean of the law school at the University of Oregon, questioned whether massive busing was really in the interest of black children...
...Words lose a lot in translation when other people start reporting your " r e a l " meaning...
...They all sounded very sure of their facts, though obviously one man could not be holding all these jobs...
...Lay not that flattering unction to your s o u l , " Hamlet warned...
...Thomas Sowell MEDIA SMEARS: ONE MAN'S EXPERIENCES A noted economist fires back...
...Gary Vasilash begins our senes with a look at a /iU~rateur never well explained but always well sold by the liberal reviewers ~ . WILUAM STYRON...
...Historically, people who have looked at things differently have always been seen as a t h r e a t - - i n science, religion, the military, and every other field of human concern and commitment...
...I expected them to be surprising to others, and probably, not very popular...
...Peregnne Worsthome, associate editor of London's Sundag Telegraph...
...I first went through two articles of mine that Gilliam was denouncing...
...When former Cabinet member Patricia Roberts Harris proclaimed that 1 did not know what poverty was, no one questioned what basis she had for that statement, or what relevance it had to the facts about public policy...
...Not all demonstrably false statements can be a t t r i b u t e d to political bias or personal animosity...
...As one who qui( his job as an economic analyst for the world's largest corporation to become an academic, I was hardly following a course of action likely to maximize my income...
...Responsible Journalism Any discussion of irresponsible or malicious s t a t e m e n t s in the press is i t s e l f misleading if it does not mention that there are fair, honest, and intelligent journalists as well...
...Others have depicted me as advising other blacks to We Can Give You Six New Reasons to Subscribe t o THE ROCKFORD PAPERS...
...MARLYN FRENCH and MARY GORDON...
...please) - ~please pnnt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ADDRESS CITY STATE ZiP ASRP2 emulate my example, though they could never seem to come up with any specific quote from when I had done so...
...And they drove Mercedes while I drove a Volkswagen...
...liberalism, education, the media, the New R~ht and the Moral Majonty has brought favorable mention in pubhcations as diverse as the Washington PosL New Oxford Review and the Congressional Record...
...tions of a group of celebrated modem authors...
Vol. 15 • May 1982 • No. 5
