MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Unfinished Business Here, in no particular order, are some pieces of unfinished business—a summer's end clearance of miscellaneous items from my very cluttered desk: H In the...
...diplomats formerly stationed in Chile—threatened to reinstate the action if a new edition were printed...
...H In the Datelines section of the May issue, Jane Juffer reported on the case of Demetria Martinez, a free-lance journalist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was charged with conspiring to violate immigration laws after she covered an attempt to bring two pregnant Salvadoran women to sanctuary in the United States...
...The Council also eased some restrictions on the designation of "family partners" in connection with minor benefits available to city employees, but rejected broader attempts to liberalize the definition of the word "family...
...H And speaking of awards—Robin Epstein's "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Plutonium" (February issue) was cited by the Northeast Region of Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, as the year's best nonfiction magazine piece by a student...
...Epstein was enrolled in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University when she wrote the article about pending plans to ship plutonium around the world on commercial aircraft...
...A new edition with an addendum on the legal dispute has been published by Simon & Schuster as a Touchstone paperback...
...H Keenen Peck's article, "When 'Family' Is Not a Household Word" (September issue), dealt with "single-family zoning" in Madison, Wisconsin, and other forms of what he called "discrimination against those in loving but unorthodox relationships...
...Mencken Awards...
...MEMO from the Editor Unfinished Business Here, in no particular order, are some pieces of unfinished business—a summer's end clearance of miscellaneous items from my very cluttered desk: H In the August issue, I reported in this space on the case of Jim Fitts, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Kingstree, South Carolina, who faced up to a year's imprisonment on highly unusual charges of "criminal libel" for questioning the honesty of a couple of state legislators...
...But they never made a suit against the book...
...Hauser filed a $6.5 million lawsuit against the publishers and won a settlement which gave him rights to the book...
...I suggested that criminal-libel statutes, which are still on the books in about half the states, are an affront to the First Amendment...
...H In a report on the Pentagon's biological-warfare plans ("Poisons from the Pentagon," November 1987 issue), Seth Shul-man wrote that some biological and biomedical researchers across the country were launching an effort to refuse all funds involving the use of biological research for military purposes...
...They were right about that...
...The publishers chose not to go back to press...
...Poisons from the Pentagon" was named by Project Censored as one of the ten "Best Censored" news stories of 1987— articles that should have been, but weren't, covered by the mass media...
...H In Claudia Dreifus's interview with Constantin Costa-Gavras (September issue), the director said of his film, Missing, "We were sued by some of the people indirectly portrayed in the movie...
...in El Salvador...
...In fact, as several readers have pointed out, a libel suit was brought not only against Costa-Gavras and the producers and distributors of Missing, but also against Thomas Hauser, on whose book, The Execution of Charles Horman, the film was based, and against the original publishers, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (hard cover) and Avon (paperback...
...It is also a finalist in the investigative journalism category of the annual H.L...
...That boycott, Shulman advised us recently, "is now fully under way...
...She said she hoped her victory would "encourage other reporters to get out and find out what the Government has to hide in its role...
...Petersburg Times in Florida...
...The book on which Missing was based had many more elements against those guys, even direct accusations...
...Since I wrote that piece, the charges against Jim Fitts have been dropped at the request of the two offended legislators, who said they had come to understand that the case was giving their community a bad name...
...She is now on the staff of the St...
...Another piece from The Progressive, Donna Demac's "Sworn to Silence" (May 1987), is also a Mencken finalist...
...The claims against the book were dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out, but the plaintiffs—three U.S...
...After that article went to press, the Madison City Council voted to open some zoning classifications that had previously been closed to households consisting of unmarried couples with their children...
...Early in August, Martinez and her co-defendant, the Reverend Glen Remer-Thamert, were acquitted of all charges by a Federal jury...
Vol. 52 • October 1988 • No. 10
