MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Easy Targets The October 1973 issue was my first as Editor of The Progressive, so I remember details about that issue that I'd be hard-pressed to recall about some much more...
...The article was noteworthy because of its sensitive portrayal of human beings—the defendants, the jurors, the judge...
...But I've known Betty Medsger for a long time, and I know that to call her a racist is to strip that word of all meaning...
...friends tend not to fight back...
...MEMO from the Editor Easy Targets The October 1973 issue was my first as Editor of The Progressive, so I remember details about that issue that I'd be hard-pressed to recall about some much more recent ones...
...No worthy cause is well served by shoddy and contemptible means—or by taking potshots at easy targets...
...The charge was made by Professor Oba T'Shaka, the head of San Francisco State's black-studies department, at an emotion-charged forum devoted to the school's student newspaper and its coverage of a recent student-government election campaign...
...Several years ago, Medsger wrote a revealing book about the California Right's campaign against former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird...
...Attacking friends is so much easier...
...The writer was Betty Medsger, a former Washington Post reporter...
...I know nothing, except for what I've read in a few sketchy reports, about the controversy involving the student newspaper and student elections...
...Minority students account for about a third of her department's enrollment—many times the average for other institutions— and Medsger has been trying to raise funds to establish a Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism that will specialize in the recruitment, retention, graduation, and placement of minority students...
...When I called her, she voiced concern that the "particularly strange" attack on her might undercut her efforts to recruit more minority students...
...It was widely reprinted by advocacy organizations for the disabled...
...The trial was noteworthy because it was the first in a long series of Government cases against such demonstrators to result in findings of not guilty on all counts...
...I'm sure many long-time subscribers will remember her article, "Justice in a Camden Court," which dealt with the trial of a group of Catholic war resisters who had broken into a Selective Service office and destroyed draft records...
...For years, "Justice in a Camden Court" was a mainstay of our reprints list...
...There was, for example, the special satisfaction of working with a gifted and dedicated writer who produced what turned out to be a memorable piece...
...Betty Medsger's byline appeared over another blockbuster in our March 1979 issue—an investigative piece headed "The Most Captive Consumers" that told how disabled persons were at the mercy of a company that had a virtual monopoly on the manufacture of wheelchairs...
...Reader response was swift and supportive...
...Medsger, in a letter to friends and colleagues, called it "outrageous" and reaffirmed "our continuing strong commitment to being anti-racist in our teaching and to being a valuable source of future journalists...
...However, I can't agree with her characterization of her experience as particularly strange...
...Medsger now chairs the journalism department at San Francisco State University, and in that position she has made special efforts to break down the racial barriers that still prevail in the American news media...
...That article won first place in the National Press Club's 1979 award competition for excellence in consumer reporting...
...Vernon Thompson, a black member of the journalism faculty, called the accusation "absolute nonsense...
...Some of our colleagues on the Left—whether their cause is racial equality or peace or environmental protection or economic justice—seem to feel much more comfortable attacking their friends than confronting their enemies...
...But it's a victory achieved by character assassination and malicious slander, and we should not shrink from calling it what it is—a phony display of misplaced militancy...
...Against that background, it isn't difficult to imagine how I felt when a friend sent me a copy of a story that appeared recently in Editor & Publisher, the newspaper trade weekly, which quoted an accusation that the San Francisco State journalism program "is administered and taught by racists...
...on the contrary, it's all too common...
...They know that whatever they've done for the cause can't possibly be enough, so they promise to redouble^ their efforts—as Betty Medsger has—and then their accusers can claim a great victory...
Vol. 52 • March 1988 • No. 3
