LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Diversity or Death Contrary to June Jordan's assumptions in "Diversity or Death" (Just Inside the Door, June issue), diversity will be the death of us once we no longer share...
...All in all, the aerial spraying program is a dangerous, costly failure, and rethinking is urgently needed...
...It is a locus of serious politics and human drama...
...As the article stated, my calls were not returned...
...Aphids and white flies have increased in the sprayed areas...
...A fact: Fred Friendly was not called in "to mediate...
...I agree with Dean Konner that it's a good idea to keep a clear record of what has happened here...
...Walsh cannot, she should have withdrawn it or should not have allowed it to be published in her name...
...I read with sadness your "Sighted Star, Sank Same" item about Vice President Dan Quayle's endorsement of an international star-wars effort to hunt down and destroy asteroids headed toward Earth (No Comment, July issue...
...Joan Konner Publisher Columbia Journalism Review New York, New York The author replies: I made repeated calls to the Columbia Journalism Review while my article was in preparation...
...I see it quite differently: Our leaders are so full of greed that they sell us out to the highest bidder...
...You mention the "suicide raid" by "Palestinian guerrillas," but not the event that inspired it—the murder of seven Palestinian workers at a bus stop and the ensuing wounding of some 700 unarmed demonstrators by the Israeli Defense Forces...
...Walsh's reporting about Afghanistan (Journalistic Jihad," May issue...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...the network's publicist has also mentioned it in his attempts to discredit me among members of the media...
...I've walked picket lines before...
...And what of the area's bird population...
...The people of Latin America will not know peace until the ominous presence of the United States and its multinational corporations disappears from their lives...
...John Burton Washington, New Jersey Look Out Below...
...The trouble is that we are all Ronald Reagans at heart, comfortable patriots with teflon coating on our consciences that allows the sins of our policies to be easily rinsed off...
...As publisher, I could have succeeded if I tried...
...Because of the energy released, fusion would occur in the fireball...
...And then he shot past them into the office...
...Whom should I see crossing his co-workers' picket line but vaguely liberal Sam Donaldson...
...Several of my friends were murdered...
...I would expect such smirking ignorance from a publication of the Right, not from The Progressive...
...If the Medflies infest every fruit and vegetable grown in California, it will be due to the sloppy, scattergun approach the state's Department of Agriculture is taking, and not to the citizenry's concern for its health and welfare...
...The former member of the Israeli Defense Forces who killed the seven workers has been excused in mainstream U.S...
...None of us can resist an opportunity to laugh at Dan Quayle, but the threat of Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids is real...
...Pets, stray animals, domestic livestock, and the beleaguered homeless are all at risk...
...LETTERS to the Editor Diversity or Death Contrary to June Jordan's assumptions in "Diversity or Death" (Just Inside the Door, June issue), diversity will be the death of us once we no longer share a common language, a common sense of history, a core of common values...
...CJR published an article it can stand behind...
...Why is this a story...
...And Baja California's recent election of a conservative PAN governor puts the state in the forefront of opposition to the decades-long PRI monopoly...
...I don't...
...Here are some of the errors: A fact: David Burke, president of CBS News, did not call the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and never "demanded"—or even asked—that the article be killed...
...I envy The Progressive's ability to have its cake and eat it, too...
...D. Raisman Brooklyn, New York Cowardice or Greed...
...We used to have a more honest term: We had a War Department until it was transformed into the Department of Defense in 1949...
...Edwina White Rio Linda, California Journalistic jihad There are errors of both assumption and fact on the part of The Progressive and Mary Williams Walsh in Erwin Knoll's story on Ms...
...Should they fail in this endeavor (and they are beginning to fail, largely as a result of bilingualism and cultural pluralism), our 200-year-old experiment in democratic government will come to an end...
...an editor did...
...Devlin is the best loved and most respected Irish activist, North and South...
...And how about all them divestiture nuts meddlin' in that there South African dispute...
...Governments have lied to us before about what's poisonous and what isn't...
...Somehow, I always thought a basic convention of our craft was to try to verify the accuracy of facts for an article—especially if the article attacked a particular individual—in this case, the publisher of CJR...
...Apparently, the editors of The Progressive find the destruction of most or all of life on Earth amusing...
...The more famous one—the 1908 Tungusa incident in Siberia—occurred on the latitude of Leningrad...
...If it were to collide with our planet, an entire country or an entire continent could be destroyed...
...Ron Robboy San Diego, California Editor's note: The editors of The Progressive, notorious for their profligate use of punctuation, accept full responsibility for the inappropriate comma...
...Why should the Soviet Union be an exception...
...It would be safer, cheaper, and more effective to send small crews with portable equipment to the trees where the pests are found, and have the workers begin localized spraying...
...That's a questionable characterization...
...The Republicans have been the minority party in the House of Representatives since 1955, and none of their members have held a committee chairmanship in all that time...
...Fred Friendly was, in fact, shown a copy of the article when its publication was in doubt, and was asked to react to it...
...So much rock would be lifted into the atmosphere, along with solids created by huge amounts of evaporated seawater, that the Earth's surface would be cut off from sunlight for several years—in other words, nuclear winter...
...We Americans have always had our differences, but we shared a belief in the Constitution and an understanding that we are an English-speaking nation with a history that extends back through the Administrations of all our Presidents to the Revolutionary War, the landing of the Pilgrims, the English parliaments, the democracy of ancient Greece, the birth of mankind...
...I guess it all depends on whose cotton the United States is pickin', hey...
...One Cheer for Bush Your editorial "One Cheer for Bush" (Comment, June issue) should have been subtitled, "Three Cheers for Hitler and Stalin," or "Sieg Heil Gorbachev...
...The pickets razzed him a little, but Sam was ready for them: "Get off my back," he growled at his colleagues...
...But I was not told until after the magazine had closed why they were being made, and at whose behest...
...The shock waves would be unimaginable...
...A fact: Joan Konner's letter, dated July 27, was the first response from anyone at CJR to an article in the May issue of The Progressive, which went into distribution on April 5. Mary Williams Walsh offers these comments: "A meeting did take place between CBS News President David Burke and the editor of CJR...
...White Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Pro-Israeli Perspective One of the obstacles to getting our national leaders to adopt a sane policy regarding the Middle East has been that our media report events from an overwhelmingly pro-Israeli perspective, as Andrea Wright points out in "Newsroom Outcast" (Journal Entry, August issue...
...Please give us more articles on Northern Ireland...
...This is the way the "Indian Wars" were covered in this country...
...As for the sidebar on Mike Hoover, it was submitted by Ms...
...What bothers me as much as these, and other, errors of fact that Ms...
...What the Medfly eradication program proves is that democracy in the United States has effectively ceased to exist: An overwhelming majority of sprayed citizens oppose the program, but a few agricultural employees made a loony, insupportable, irresponsible decision, and that's that...
...Now the transit point for millions of immigrants, the Tijuana-San Diego international border crossing is said to be the busiest in the world...
...Walsh has circulated about the CJR article are the assumptions that she (and The Progressive) makes that publications—namely The Wall Street Journal and CJR—that come to similar conclusions about a piece of work (in this case, different pieces of work) reach those conclusions for identical reasons and, therefore, have the same motivations and hold the same values...
...As Erwin Knoll knows, he never called me...
...Erwin Knoll Madison, Wisconsin Right Pew Wrong Chair Erwin Knoll writes that CBS Afghan field producer Kurt Lohbeck "found work on Capitol Hill with a House committee chaired by Representative Manuel Lu-jan, the New Mexico Republican who is now Secretary of the Interior...
...In many cases, the violence perpetrated by Native Americans was a direct response to an atrocity committed by white settlers or the U.S...
...I expect The Progressive to be on the cutting edge in pushing for freedom for all people, so imagine my feelings when you endorsed George Bush's reluctance to recognize Lithuanian independence...
...The Russians have attempted to extinguish Lithuanian language and culture...
...news coverage as being "mad...
...Devastating tidal waves would engulf shores around the world...
...The Progressive called this part of Lohbeck's "criminal record...
...A fact: Mary Walsh showed the Wall Street Journal article to the editor of CJR as background for the article she was proposing for the magazine...
...James M. Causey Washington, D.C...
...Eileen Neil Bayside.New York The Medfly Wars Albert L. Huebner's "The Medfly Wars" (June issue) was accurate but much too gentle...
...Fil Valiunas Amherst, Massachusetts The Progressive praises the United States for keeping "its cotton-pickin' fingers off another nation's affairs" with reference to the Lithuanian "dispute," yet criticizes it on the next page for not doing more to thwart Japan's plutonium-reprocessing industry...
...I would be glad to serve as executioner of those who committed the crimes...
...She says nothing about the victims or their survivors...
...Laverne Rison Albuquerque, New Mexico Vaguely Liberal Iwas glad to see The Progressive raising eyebrows about Sam Donaldson, the "vaguely liberal" newsreader ("Raised Eyebrow," Comment, July issue...
...Americans need to know what is happening there...
...Frank de la Rosa Brooklyn, New York The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...I'd like to add to their list the use of the word "defense," as in defense budget or Department of Defense...
...A tiny asteroid weighing tens of thousands of tons would not be perceptibly slowed down by the Earth's atmosphere...
...Your analysis of what needs to be done is right on target...
...A fact: I did not edit the CJR article...
...Undoubtedly, Knoll meant that Lujan served, or perhaps was the ranking minority member (vice chair), on such a panel...
...Dean Konner correctly states that she didn't 'edit' the piece...
...J.B...
...She has never stopped working for peace and justice...
...It is well and good for Native Americans, latecomers, blacks, and others to study their own history and language, but the job of the public schools is to teach the English language, American-English literature, and American history...
...Still, I appreciate your effort at changing the way we see and deal with the conflict in the Middle East...
...During the past decade, when an effort was begun to track these asteroids, at least one new one has been found each year...
...A fact: I did not try to kill the article...
...A crash into the ocean would be even worse...
...But in your coverage, all Palestinians must take the blame for the attack on the Israeli beach...
...Walsh as an add-on feature and was cut by the editor to fit the sidebar format...
...Every massacre perpetrated by the Indians was reported in grisly detail, while the mistreatment of Indians was ignored...
...But it is also a fact that she received a warning letter from Kurt Lohbeck's lawyer while the editor was at work and that she then raised many objections when the editor had finished his job and the story was in type—a highly unusual intervention for a publisher, and one that aroused strenuous protests from the CJR editorial staff...
...Wendell Berry says "our leaders are a terribly cowardly bunch" (Interview, May issue...
...Army...
...The crater would go down below the crust into the molten rock of the mantle...
...She did not submit the Mercy Fund story to CJR, as The Progressive's publication of that story suggested...
...CBS seems to regard this tape as evidence of some sort of misconduct on my part...
...was a question I raised about a particular point which was then removed because the editors agreed it was not relevant to the story...
...Fred A. Glienna South Pasadena, California News from Death Row Does Holly Metz think people are on death row for selling bad Girl Scout cookies ("The News from Death Row," On the Line, June issue...
...Lithuania is a Russian colony and has been for hundreds of years...
...You also fail to mention that the raid was not condoned either by the Palestine Liberation Organization or by the Unified Leadership of the Intifadah...
...Defense' Con Game In "Media Con Games" (July issue), Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon offer a number of good examples of how the media slant the news in favor of our ruling Establishment...
...Is that vaguely liberal...
...Burke played the editor a tape of my interview with CBS's Kurt Lohbeck...
...Pete Dolack Garfield, New Jersey Bernadette Devlin Thank you for Laurie Udesky's interview with Bernadette Devlin (July issue...
...Two asteroids (both smaller than these examples) have struck the Earth in this century, one in 1908 and one in 1947...
...I think what Sam meant to say was that he walked picket lines when he made less money...
...However one reads the changes taking place, one expects the right punctuation...
...But the larger message is that citizens are powerless to command the politicians they elect and the bureaucrats they fund...
...Ladybugs and many other insects, the natural prey of these plant diseases, have disappeared...
...Walsh...
...But as we detail the facts, let's not forget the underlying issue: that Columbia University awarded CBS a prize for its Afghanistan coverage, that serious questions have been raised about this coverage, and that Columbia has not yet re-examined the work in question and decided whether to withdraw the prize...
...The Progressive reported that point: that a charge was brought in court against Kurt Lohbeck twenty-five years ago and the charge was dismissed...
...Norbert Weber Santa Rosa, California Teflon Conscience Regarding Claudia Drei-fus's interview with Sergio Bitar (August issue), the Augusto Pinochets of this hemisphere know they are on firm ground because they have the backing of the imperialist policies of the United States...
...C/K's editor, to her credit, went ahead after the meeting with plans to publish my article...
...About two years ago, I happened to be walking past the Washington, D.C., offices of ABC News, then in the midst of a bitter strike...
...The Progressive says the United States has an obligation to "keep its cotton pickin' fingers off' Soviet internal affairs, but it doesn't seem to feel that way about South Africa, Israel, South Korea, etc...
...If Ms...
...Also, if she cannot stand behind it, she should discontinue quoting CJR to give herself—and all she feels was distorted or left out of the article—credibility...
...This form of spraying is practical and effective, and would reduce the fallout in terms of both politics and pesticides...
...It's true that I was told the revisions were being made, and assented...
...I raised many questions about the reporting which, after checking, the editors dealt with in consultation with Ms...
...The article she subsequently wrote for CJR was not the same article...
...Unfortunately, The Progressive's own editorial in the same issue, "Rumors of War," illustrates the point...
...Shadrach A. Stanleigh Albany, New York Baja California Molly Ivins's New Age spa (Small Favors, August issue) is not, as her column has it, in Baja, California, but in the Mexican state of Baja California, which is no longer the mere tourist backwater many of us gringos used to regard it as...
...Consistent opposition to all forms of colonial oppression should be the goal of all progressives...
Vol. 54 • September 1991 • No. 9
