MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Eye Witness My first issue of In Fact arrived in the mail in July 1947. It was subtitled An Antidote for Falsehood in the Daily Press, and it was like no publication I had...
...His work in the 1930s and 1940s paved the way for such successors as A.J...
...I no longer remember what induced me to subscribe to In Fact at the age of sixteen, but I was hooked from the start...
...Central Intelligence Agency, which asked us to send, by first-class mail, "one copy of the April 2, 1987 issue of The Progressive...
...The Progressive is a monthly magazine, so it has no "April 2" issue...
...We're grateful to the Fund for Constitutional Government for a grant that helped defray the costs of Mark Perry's investigative report on the Veterans Administration ("Conditions Less than Honorable," May issue...
...Judging from his memoirs, which are about to be published by Ballantine, he has lost none of his zest, none of his passionate commitment to justice, none of his caustic view of the powers that be...
...I saved every issue I received, and they're before me right now, yellow and brittle, bound into two bulging loose-leaf binders that I've lugged from city to city for forty years...
...In an editorial addressed "to all our faithful subscribers," Seldes wrote: "It seems to me it is unfortunate that at this desperate time, when we could be of greatest service to all independent and liberal elements, that we must, owing to costs which increase year after year...
...Liebling, I.F...
...In those days, most newspapers wouldn't touch a story linking smoking to cancer...
...At The Progressive, I like to think, we're carrying on his work...
...Seldes began his newspaper career in 1909, at about the time Robert M. LaFollette Sr...
...Stone, and Ben Bagdikian...
...It was an advance copy of Witness to a Century that sent me to my tattered old copies of In Fact...
...He interviewed Lenin, was expelled from Italy by Mussolini, and reported on the Spanish Civil War with Hemingway...
...In Fact never came back...
...We sent off a copy of our April issue, featuring our interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko as well as Allan Nairn's revelations of secret taping of national security aides' telephone conversations...
...The last issue was dated October 2, 1950...
...We hope that this decision will not be of long duration...
...In Fact had a virtual exclusive for years...
...Seldes is ninety-six years old now, and has lived for many years on a farm in Vermont...
...Seldes was bitter about what he called "the apathetic majority" in this country, but he was confident that his readers would "never give up this conflict with your real enemies, the enemies of all the American people, including the apathetic majority...
...In Fact had already been published for seven years by the time I discovered it...
...Suppressed News: FTC Brands Million-Dollar Advertising Press and Air Campaigns False...
...Its editor, publisher, and—for the most part-sole author was a seasoned journalist named George Seldes, who had made his reputation as a foreign correspondent before becoming America's first prominent press critic...
...Pressure on Justice Department Blocks Suit Involving 18 Wall Street Banks, Cabinet Members, Marshall Aide...
...Can't they get anything right...
...Here are a few more headlines from the 1940s, just to give you a taste of what In Fact was all about: Multi-Billion Profit Swindle Buried on Back Pages as Press Protects Price-Gouging Firms...
...The main headline in that issue read, Bare Links Between Congressmen and Big Business Lobbyists Who Work Against Public Interest...
...Apurchase order arrived a few days ago from the U.S...
...The main headline on my second issue dealt with one of In Fact's pathbreaking crusades: 'Stop Cancer' Drive Suppresses Scientific News Linking Disease to Well-Advertised Cigarettes...
...The Senator referred to in that last headline, incidentally, was Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and In Facfs expose appeared long before he had made his mark as the preeminent witchhunter of the postwar years...
...It was subtitled An Antidote for Falsehood in the Daily Press, and it was like no publication I had ever seen before—a modest four-page newsletter that carried news found nowhere else...
...was starting up this magazine...
...When Woodrow Wilson went to Versailles for the treaty negotiations after World War I, Seldes covered the story...
...The book is called Witness to a Century...
...Senator 'Neglects' to Report $43,000 Profit in Stock Deals, News Services Kill Tax Scandal...
...make this decision...
...We hope that's the issue the CIA had in mind...
Vol. 51 • June 1987 • No. 6
