Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR Calls Church-State Separation Vital to American Way of Life Lawrence T. King's letter in The New Leader of June 28 is a distortion of the facts. Our system of government is not "based...
...Shirer produces his latest hunk of self-glorification, disguised as a novel...
...Thus, he squarely endorses Shirer's accusations...
...Shirer was forced from the air because of his liberal viewpoint, he has not made such statement...
...Our system of government is not "based on the recognition that man's first allegiance is not to the state, but to God...
...If so, why didn't Shirer say so in 1947...
...Justice Irving H. Saypol, without hearing a word of answering testimony, directed the jury to find for the defense...
...Was Murrow lying...
...He was denouncing Churchill for thwarting them...
...Any attempt to break down that separation should be exposed and resisted as a menace to our freedom...
...Separation of Church and State is fundamental to our way of living...
...2. Shirer hasn't sued the publishers of Red Channels, but several others named in it have...
...Did anything like this take place...
...I add two facts, briefly: 1. After Shirer left CBS, he spoke repeatedly at Communist-front affairs, surrounded by well-known Communists, addressing obviously Communist audiences, in an atmosphere hard for a non-Communist to breathe in...
...I am no partisan of Paley and Murrow, but let us compare Shirer's accusations with the known facts of his dispute with CBS in March 1947...
...Hicks, "the book is effective enough...
...Americans are free to worship or not to worship, as their conscience dictates...
...New York City Gustav Davidson Contests Shirer's Version Of 1947 Resignation from CBS Reviewing William L. Shirer's novel Stranger Come Home in The New Leader of June 21, Granville Hicks describes himself as "one who shares Mr...
...There is nothing in our basic guarantees about allegiance to God...
...Significantly, on March 31, 1947 the New York Times reported: "Although others have declared that Mr...
...Hicks is making the obvious translations from the thinly disguised substitutes used in the novel...
...That is exclusively the Catholic viewpoint...
...Why, then, doesn't he translate the names of those "cowardly radio executives"?namely, CBS President William S. Paley and Vice President Edward R. Murrow...
...New York City Andrew Avery...
...Just as Shirer's novel was about to go on sale, the first Red Channels libel trial came to an end in the Supreme Court of New York County...
...Shirer's complaints of injustice were carefully vague...
...If it did not take place, then Shirer's fictionalized account, which has deceived Mr...
...Washington (Treaty with Tripoli, 1797) declared that "the Government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion...
...He was continuing his long campaign in favor of the Communist-controlled Greek EAM and its military arm, ELAS...
...The plaintiff had finished presenting his case...
...The Communists urged boycott of his sponsor...
...It quoted Murrow as saying after Shirer's last broadcast: "At no time has he claimed to us that our decision was based upon any objection to the content of his broadcast or on what have been called his liberal views...
...CBS decided to give his spot to Joseph C. Harsch and to transfer Shirer to another time...
...Paley thunders against Shirer for a broadcast he has just made, and forbids him to broadcast another script, in which he is about to assail a wicked Senator...
...Shirer rejected the transfer and resigned...
...Shirer was then not only preaching his usual lovc-the-Soviets gospel, but in particular he was attacking the Truman Doctrine, which had just been announced...
...In mentioning McCarthy and Red Channels, Mr...
...Seven years pass...
...Hicks and many other readers, is not merely fiction—it is a lie and a libel...
...Shirer's indignation.'' "As an attack on Senator McCarthy, Red Channels, and the cowardly behavior of certain high-placed radio executives, says Mr...
...If so, why didn't Shirer contradict him at once...
...In this there is a Big Scene in the office of the bullying Paley, who denounces Shirer and squelches the glum and craven Murrow...
...Furthermore, the Constitution of the United States specifically states that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
...Shirer's listening audience was apparently smaller than CBS had expected, in view of his favorable broadcast time—Sundays at 5:45 p.m...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 32
