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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

The Makings of a Gadfly - George Seldes

presented by

Helen Ann Fordham

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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THE MAKINGS OF A GADFLY -- GEORGE SELDES

BY
Helen Ann Fordham

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

School of Journalism

1992

ABSTRACT
THE MAKINGS OF A GADFLY -- GEORGE SELDES
BY

Helen Fordham

George Seldes' persistent criticisms of the daily press
developed out of his experiences in the First World War,
Fascist Italy, Mexico, the Spanish Civil War, his meeting
with Dr. Alfred Adler, and his editorship of the
intellectual magazine Egg. Each of these experiences
reinforced Seldes’ view that the American press during the
19303 and 19405 was corrupt. This study examines Seldes'
experiences in each of these events and integrates them with
his writings and his vision of the press, thus defining the

factors that influenced his criticisms of the press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank George Seldes for so freely sharing
his life and papers. I would also like to thank Dr. Lucinda
Davenport for her advice and patient editing, Dr. Stan
Soffin for the idea, Dr. Bill Cote for the encouragement and
Erik Larson for the support.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION............. ........ ......... 1
Literature Review
Goal of the Study
Method

Summary

2. BACKGROUND........ ........................ 15
Seldes' Childhood
Seldes - The Reporter

Summary

3. THE FIRST WORLD WAR....................... 36
The Press Corp
Wartime Censorship
Seldes’ Criticisms of Press Coverage of the War

Summary

4. ITALIAN FASCISM..... ...... ... ............. 55
Seldes' Expulsion
Seldes' Criticisms of Fascism

Summary

iv

DR. ALFRED ADLER................. ...... ... 76

Self Analysis

Summary

6. MEXICOOOOOOO0.0.0.0....00.000.000.00. ..... 83
Sabotage by the United States Press
Summary

7. THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR.. ................... 94
Seldes’ Coverage of Spain
Seldes’ Criticisms of the Civil War Press Coverage
Summary

8. KEN“GAZINEOOO........OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...O 113
The Concept
Seldes' Criticisms of Ken
Summary

9. SELDES, WORKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ..... 00...... 125
Book Reviews
Criticisms of In Eact
Summary

100 SWY AND CONCLUSIONOOOOOOOOOOO.......O 154
APPENDIX 1000......OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 174

1. List of George Seldes’ Books

BIBLIOGRAPHY.. ....... ........ ........... 176

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Journalist George Henry Seldes has finally come in from
the cold. He has gone from being a press critic pariah to a
man of vision. After a lifetime of being labelled a
"Communist" and "Intellectual Saboteur" he is now being
described by some as one of the most "effective muckrakers
of our time, better than Upton Sinclair and on a par with
Lincoln Steffens."1 He has been hailed as an inspirational
journalist and the key link in America's new generation of
investigative reporters."2

This amazing metamorphosis has taken a long time.
Seldes turned his back on a successful career as a foreign
correspondent in 1927 to become a press critic, a role that
brought him public ridicule and ostracism. For almost 60
years Seldes wrote books and articles that crusaded against
the suppression and censorship of news in the mainstream
press. He, like many other press critics during the 19305
and 19405, demanded free and uncensored news at a time when
the press was powerful, profitable and reactionary.3
Unlike other press critics, however, Seldes had his

contribution repeatedly overlooked by history and his

2
criticisms stifled by a mainstream press that appears to
have black-bailed him for his views.‘

Despite this persecution, Seldes’ commitment to an
ethical, responsible and free press remained unwaivering,
and it is worth investigating what experiences made him
write the way he did. By looking at these experiences one
might be able to understand what influenced the formation of
his criticisms and turned him into such a staunch defender
of the rights of a free press. In addition, by examining
Seldes’ evaluation of the press it is also possible to
illuminate aspects of this period of press criticism, which
has been described by journalism historian Edwin Emery as
one of the most active and vehement since the 17903, when
people objected to the press’ political power.5

Seldes' career as a journalist and press critic spanned
80 years. It began in 1909 when he started as a cub
reporter at the Pittsburgh Leader. He went on to become a
foreign correspondent and then head of the Berlin Bureau for
the Chicago Tribune. After he left the newspaper business
in 1929, he wrote twenty-two books and authored a radical

6

newsletter devoted to press criticism. The newsletter, g3

Fact, launched in 1940 was the first of its genre and it

 

provided Seldes with a forum for his criticisms.7

Despite Seldes’ twenty-two books, most of which are
semi-autobiographical, there is no precise objective

explanation as to what shaped and influenced his criticisms.

3

Seldes, himself, gives tantalizing glimpses of how his
experiences affected him, but the reader is left with only
half-formed pictures of an idealistic man who was concerned
with the way the press operated and who was driven to take
on the impossible task of trying to change a press that he
felt was "venal, corrupt and prostituted."8

Seldes' denouncing of the press appears to have evolved
from of his experiences as a reporter in both America and
Europe during the first three decades of the 20th century.
In many of the books he wrote during the 19303 and 19405, he
described his encounters with men and women of history
against the panorama of a changing and revolutionary Europe.
He detailed events in Bolshevik Russia, Fascist Italy and
Franco's Spain, and his observations were to provide him
with press criticism material for several decades. It is
important to note that Seldes' experiences as a foreign
correspondent during these early years did not differ
radically from those of his colleagues. Some, like Heywood
Broun and Ruth Hale, shared similar views about the press
but few turned into quite the same uncompromising, vocal
crusader against the mainstream press that Seldes became.

Other peers during Seldes’ five decades as a critic
ranged from Upton Sinclair and Oswald Garrison Villard to
Bruce Blixan of the new Republic and I.F. Stone of The
nation. Seldes corresponded with them and many of them

raised the same issues as Seldes during the 1920s,-19303 and

4
19405.9 Yet, Seldes differed from his peers in the method
and vehemency of his protest. He published his own
newsletter and therefore wrote what he believed, without
compromise.

Many of the press critics did not have the luxury of
being an independent. They worked for mainstream or liberal
papers and were limited in what they could say and how they
could say it. They criticized the press from within the
system and were kept hostage, wrote Seldes, by the security
of their jobs as well as "age, routine, the pleasures of the

press club...marriage...and fortune."1o

They were forced to
compromise and wrote in a much more conciliatory, less
sensational manner and were more willing to acknowledge the
technical and financial constraints under which papers
worked. Furthermore, other critics were inclined to present
the positive aspects of the daily press, whereas Seldes
focused almost exclusively on the ills of the newspaper
business and would settle for nothing less than his utopian
view of what the press should ideally be. Seldes admitted
in an interview with the author, "I never thought I’d reform
journalism." However, through his aggressive criticisms and

repetitive attacks he tried to draw attention to its flaws,

with the hope of change.11

LITERATURE REVIEW

Journalism researcher Pamela Brown suggested Seldes

5
alienated many of his supporters through his uncompromising
manner of protest.12 Seldes, himself, acknowledged his
forceful style, saying: "If you see something wrong you may
as well go after it."13

Previous studies have focused on Seldes’ newsletter, In
Eggt, which was the culmination of his years of protest and
represented the essence of his criticisms. Pamela Brown in
her analysis of ln_£ag§ wrote that the ideas and criticisms
in the newsletter remained largely unaddressed by Seldes'
peers because they were neither practical nor compromising.
She wrote that they were "an assault on the very foundation
of the press in the United States."“

Four other studies of Seldes’ work exist, and those
written during the Second World War and the Cold War focused
on the-anti-establishment tenor of his writing and dismissed
him and his work as communist. In 1943, Frederick Woltman,
a reporter for the flgy¥York World Telegram, completed an
analysis of In Fact and labelled it extremist. He wrote,
"Seldes’ dopesheet ... provides a perfect object lesson in
camouflaged communist assaults on public opinion."15

Helen Jean Williams also concluded in her 1947 thesis
on In Fact that "Seldes' publication is nothing more than a
propaganda organ disguised as a legitimate vehicle for

"“ Williams compared events in In Fact with

criticism.
nineteen daily papers, and suggested that some of the events

that Seldes claimed were suppressed by the mainstream press

6
had in reality received scattered coverage in the daily
papers.

More recently, following Seldes’ first positive
national recognition in 1980 by the Association for
Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC),
studies have examined Seldes’ apparent historical oversight.
Researchers Everette E. Dennis and Claude-Jean Bertrand
looked closely at why Seldes had been overlooked and
concluded, "His monumental output dwarfs the frail and
unconnected fragments that regularly win awards, but there
is no Pulitzer Prize for the Seldes' style of criticism."17

Carl Jenson, a communications historian, agreed. In
his 1987 analysis of Seldes' work he stated: "And finally it
is time for the press to correct a gross miscarriage of
justice. George Seldes has devoted more than three quarters
of a century to journalism and improving journalism. Yet he

has never been awarded a Pulitzer Prize."18

GOAL OF THE STUDY
The previous studies on George Seldes have raised
important questions about the quality and value of his
contribution to press criticism. This study, however, will
focus on why he wrote about the subjects that he did. The
objective will be to understand how Seldes’ experiences
influenced his criticisms. It will examine six experiences

that appear to form the basis of Seldes’ criticisms and

7
provided themes that often reoccur within his work.

The parameters of the study will be confined to Seldes’
experiences prior to 1950 because he seems to have cemented
his basic views of the world by this time, views that were
to change very little in his post-1950 books. The theme
dominating all of Seldes' criticism was censorship and
distortion of the news by the daily papers. Integral to
this criticism was Seldes' views on the impact of big
business on the press. Historically, the press had been
considered, in theory, the watchdog of public interests.
However, in reality the press survived financially because
it served as a vehicle for big business advertising. Big
business, through its advertising dollars, was able to
influence newspaper content in such a way that it
increasingly conflicted with the best interests of the
public, which the press professed to serve. Seldes detested
this control, believing that big business was Fascist, anti-
1abor and anti-liberal and, consequently, detrimental to a

free and objective press.

METHOD
The themes that run throughout Seldes' writings are: 1)
suppression or distortion of the daily news, 2) impact of
Fascism on the daily press, 3) impact of big business on the
daily news, and 4) anti-labor slant of the news. These

themes appear to have evolved out of Seldes' experiences as

8
a journalist. This study then will focus on six of Seldes’
influential experiences and link them to his judgmental
themes. A total of six personal experiences were selected
because each one of them marked a new awareness for Seldes
and was significant in reinforcing and extrapolating his
basic themes.

This focusing on events should not imply that they
alone were responsible for Seldes’ development as a press
critic. Undoubtedly the assortment of people he met during
his years as a reporter were also crucial to his growth as a
critic. However, this study will focus on the events
because they serve as a vehicle to look at both the event
and the people he met.

The six selected experiences are:

1) Seldes’ coverage of the First World War

2) Seldes' expulsion from Italy in 1924

3) Seldes’ meeting with Dr. Alfred Adler in 1927
4) Seldes' coverage of Mexico

5) Seldes' coverage of the Spanish Civil War

6) Seldes' involvement with Ken Magazine

The author acknowledges that it is impossible to
determine the influences on a person’s work from a study of
six experiences, particularly in a life as full as Seldes’.
However, the experiences selected have all been repeatedly
mentioned by Seldes as being significant.19 And by

examining what he wrote about them the author may be better

9
able to discern the origins and patterns of Seldes’
criticisms.

The following questions will provide the navigation of
research investigation:

1. What did Seldes write about his experiences at the time
he experienced them?

2. How did the experiences affect his criticism of the
press?

3. What did others have to say about Seldes' criticisms?

By looking at how others responded to Seldes'
criticisms it may be possible to determine the validity of
his criticisms and thus evaluate whether he created an
accurate picture of how the press functioned during the
first four decades of the century.

This last question may be difficult to answer
considering it is generally accepted that Seldes was ignored
by the mainstream press for more than fifty years. However,
some critical reviews of some of his earlier books have been
located in The Daily Worker, The New Republic and Journalism
gnarterly. These reviews provide the opportunity to assess
what others were saying about his books at the time of their
publication.

This study will attempt to integrate: 1) Seldes'
experiences, 2) his writing of those experiences and 3) his
denouncement of the press. By establishing a connection

between these three aspects of his life it is possible to

10
better understand why he wrote what he did and in the manner
he did.

In order to examine the six experiences from Seldes'
point of view this study will look at Seldes' published
books and unpublished private papers. An investigation of
his private papers at the Van Pelt Library of the University
of Pennsylvania may yield further information that will
illuminate aspects of Seldes' career. In addition, a
personal interview with Seldes, who lives in Vermont, was
conducted by the author in December 1990 and provided
insight into why Seldes became a crusader. A qualitative
study is the best method of processing this material because
much of the work deals with Seldes’ opinions and belief
systems, which are difficult to quantify.

Chapter Two of this thesis provides a biography of
Seldes so the following chapters can be placed in the
context of his life. The chapter will look particularly at
the influence Seldes’ father had on his son’s paradigm of
the world and also examine the impact Seldes’ early years as
a reporter had on his later writings. It should be noted
that trying to ascertain whether Seldes' criticism evolved
from his heritage or his later environment is a study more
suited to a psychologist. For the purposes of this study it
will be assumed that Seldes is the sum total of his
experiences and that his criticisms were a combination of

who he was - that is, his philosophical background and what

11
he later experienced.

Chapters Three through Eight examine each of Seldes'
influential experiences and how he wrote about them. Each
chapter will consist of an explanation of the event,
followed by what Seldes wrote about the experience and
finally how the experience influenced his criticisms.

Chapter Nine looks at how critics responded to Seldes’
work and how their responses may have validated Seldes own
criticisms.

Finally, Chapter Ten draws some conclusions about why
Seldes wrote the way he did.

This study originated out of the observation that
Seldes' work appears to have experienced a renaissance in
the last two decades. He received an award by the AEJMC for
professional excellence in 1980 and several articles have
attempted to restore him to a place of honor in press critic
history. Yet, despite this return to grace, no
comprehensive biography of George Seldes exists. Perhaps
this study can serve to cast new light on whatever knowledge
already exists about a man who has spent more than eighty

years in protest against a press he considered corrupt.

SUMMARY
It is anticipated that this thesis will look closely at
what experiences formed the basis of George Seldes'

criticisms and led him to write about the issues that he

12
did. Previous studies have focused more upon what Seldes
wrote rather than what lay behind the criticisms: thus, this
study may reveal what motivated Seldes as a press critic and
persistent gadfly. And he does appear to have been a
gadfly - annoying, tenacious, unrelenting in his bites at
the established press. How he got that way can perhaps be
partially explained by his childhood and early years as a

reporter.

13

NOTES -- CHAPTER 1

1. Sylvia Ravitch, "George...The Anti-Fascist," News

Stety, May 1945, 25.

and

Paul Blanshard, "Battling For A Free Press, The Saga of
George Seldes, Journalistic Muckraker," The Churchman,
February 1977, 11.

2. Carl Jenson, "Three Cheers for George Seldes," The
QeTTT, September 1987, 15. Jenson claims that Seldes
influenced several famous investigative reporters including
I.F. Stone, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

3. Herbert Altschull, Agents gt Bower (New York: Longman
Inc., 1984), 82.

4. George Seldes, Witness to a Centurv (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 349.

5- Edwin Emery. The_£res§_in_Amerisa. 3rd ed.. (New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1972), 571.

6. George Seldes, Interview by Helen Fordham, 10 December
1990, Four Corners, Vermont, tape recording. Seldes said
that he had written 22 books, three of which had been best
sellers. However, when counting up his books they number
only 21.

7. Everette E. Dennis and Claude-Jean Bertrand, "Seldes at
90: They Don’t Give Pulitzers for that Kind of Criticism,"
Jgurnali§m_ni§t2rx 7 (Winter 1980): 120-

also

George Seldes, Interview by Helen Fordham, 10 December 1990,
Four Corners, Vermont, tape recording.

8. George Seldes, Tell the Truth and Run (New York:
Greenberg Publisher, 1953), 4.

9. Helen Fordham, "George Seldes and the Left Wing Press"
(Class paper, Michigan State University, 1991). This study
compared selected issues of In Fact, The Nation and The New
Republie and concluded that Seldes’ issues were being raised
in other left wing magazines and that many of the same
criticisms levelled at the establishment. There was,
however, considerable difference in the tone and approach

14

used by the respective publications.

10. George Seldes, Nevet Tire ef grotesting (New York: Lyle
Stuart Inc., 1968), 11.

11. George Seldes, Interview with Helen Fordham. ibid

12. Pamela Brown, "George Seldes nand the Winter Soldier
Brigade: The Press Criticism of nEact 1940—1950,"

W 6 (1989)=101.

13. George Seldes, Interview with Helen Fordham.
14. Brown, 101.

15. Frederick Woltman, "The Camouflaged Communist Press,"

Ametieen Mercety 57, (November 1943): 587.

16. Helen Jean Williams, "An Evaluation of Criticisms of
the Daily Press in George Seldes’ In Fact." (M.A. Thesis,
University of Minnesota, 1947), 135.

17. Dennis and Bertrand, 120.
18. Jenson, 18.

19. Seldes indicates in several of his books that the
experiences listed in this study were among the most
influential. For example, he wrote in Tell the Truth and Run
that the shock of discovering the truth about the First
World War made him vow to tell the truth about the war. 54.
He also acknowledged the influence of the Spanish Civil War
when he wrote in the same book, that everything that
happened to him after 1936 was conditioned by his experience
in Spain. 239 Seldes also wrote in Tell the Truth and Run
that his meeting with Dr. Alfred Adler was a "catalytic"
occasion.viii. In Mexico he learned that "I could write as
I pleased only when it fitted in with the ... policy ... of
this newspaper. Therefore I decided to resign." 223. Seldes
wrote in v e G d C n’t Cha e Histo that Mussolini
had perverted history. 57 He also acknowledged in his 1938
article in Tne_fletien that the failure of gen magazine was a
bitter disappointment.499.

CHAPTER TWO

BACKGROUND

If an individual is the sum total of his or her
experiences then it would logically follow that the
influences on George Seldes' life and criticisms are highly
complex. Further, to examine his life through a detailed
analysis of six experiences without first looking at who he
was and where he came from is to do him an injustice.

Seldes' adult life was full of exciting events and
noteworthy meetings with great people, but it is apparent
when examining his life that many of his later criticisms
and crusades can be traced to his childhood experiences.
Seldes himself acknowledged the link between his childhood
and the choices he made as an adult when he wrote, "With my
non-conformist upbringing, my choice of an occupation now

seems logical, natural, inevitable."1

SELDES’ CHILDHOOD
Seldes was born in Alliance, New Jersey, on September
10, 1890, the eldest son of George Sergius Seldes and Anna
Saphro Seldes. Alliance was a farming community that

Seldes’ father tried to turn into a Utopian colony.

15

16
However, the experiment failed shortly after his son's
birth. To earn a living, Seldes' father left his family and
went to work in a drug store in Philadelphia.

Seldes’ mother died when he was six, and George and his
brother Gilbert, who was born in 1893, were raised by an
aunt and grandparents on the family farm. Seldes later
wrote only briefly about his years on the farm and his
childhood recollections were dominated by his largely absent
father, who was perhaps the single most influential person
in his life.

The elder Seldes was an idealist and a philosopher who
spent his life pursuing noble causes. Seldes described him
as:

A libertarian, an idealist, a freethinker, a

Deist, a Utopian, a single Taxer, and a worshipper

of Thoreau and Emerson.

Seldes’ father was not always successful in achieving his
ideals but Seldes, throughout his life, retained the
greatest admiration for him. He wrote: "It was not until
my brother and I grew up and began to think that we realized
we had an extraordinary father."3

Seldes' father, though living in Pittsburgh, took
responsibility for his sons’ education and exposed them to
the writings of the great theorists of the time. The elder
Seldes took ideas from various political writers and
formulated a belief system that provided the blueprint for

his son’s later life of protest. Seldes acknowledged the

influence of his father when he wrote:

17

Gilbert and I...remained throughout our lifetimes

just what Father was, freethinkers. And,

likewise, doubters and dissenters and perhaps

Utopians.‘

Seldes' memories of his father consist almost
exclusively of his parent's political and philosophical
leanings. He recalled that his father believed in the
fundamental goodness of human nature and the eternal
possibility of change. This faith fueled the elder Seldes’
commitment to Utopian communities up until his death in
1931. Seldes inherited his father's belief in human nature
and it provided the impetus for his own years of protest.

The elder Seldes was a committed liberal and debated
the relative merits of liberalism in correspondence with
Prince Peter Kropotkin and Count Leo Tolstoy. He insisted
that liberals, because they believed in tolerance to all
schools of thought, could never be part of an organized
group.5 He encouraged non-conformity in his children, and
quoting Emerson, told them that "Who would be a man must be

a non-conformist."‘

Seldes, following this advice, never
joined a political party.

Seldes’ father's non-conformist lessons taught his sons
to be freethinkers and encouraged them to never accept
unquestioningly the dictates of society. He insisted the
boys keep an open mind to all religious and political
philosophies.

While emphasizing tolerance, Seldes’ father also told

his sons never to compromise on important principles. He

18
demonstrated this in his own life when he insisted upon
running an ethical pharmacy by refusing to bribe doctors to
refer business his way or pay-off police to protect him. As
a result, wrote Seldes, "we were continually persecuted."7
The drug store suffered as the elder Seldes sacrificed
business acumen for personal idealism. Seldes wrote that
this uncompromising stance impressed him greatly, and he was
later to adopt the same attitude in his battles with the
press.

Although a theorist, Seldes' father did not confine his
arguments to the abstract: instead he translated his
philosophical commitment into action. He became secretary
of the Friends of Russian Freedom - a group that raised
money to support the overthrow of the Tsar — and it was
indirectly through this connection that his son George had
his first contact with the press.

Seldes was in Philadelphia with his father when the
1905 RusSian Revolution occurred and the local reporters
rushed to interview the elder Seldes. Seldes, who was 15,
listened to the interview and was surprised to hear the
reporters quoting his father verbatim over the phone as they
relayed the story to their papers. He had, until then,
thought that reporters created masterpieces in the local
newspapers by improving on everything they heard. This
meeting with the press was significant to Seldes who wrote

eighty years later that it was this first meeting which

19

"determined me to be a newspaperman."8

It was to be another three years before Seldes became a
reporter and in the meantime he continued to attend school.
His father believed Seldes would have a greater chance at
getting into college with a high school diploma from a
larger school. So in 1907, Seldes left Alliance and went to
live with his father in Pittsburgh where the elder Seldes
had bought his own drug store. Seldes transferred to
Pittsburgh High School, but dropped out soon after because
"not being a very bright boy" he was asked to re-take his
junior year.9

He went to work for a short while at his father’s
pharmacy, filling prescriptions before approaching the
Eittebetgn_Leeget in 1909 to become a reporter. He wrote
that he wanted to be "a writer, and preferably a dramatist"
and had decided to become a journalist because "newspaper

adventures still appealed to my farm-boy mind as the

greatest of all callings."1o

SELDES - THE REPORTER
Seldes was idealistic about journalism and the role it
played in society. He wrote in 1929: "I ... cling to that
very old fashioned belief that the press is the most
powerful estate and that the journalist is the great molder
of public opinion."11 On a more personal level, Seldes felt

that ”newspaper work meant freedom of the individual." He

20

had read Thoreau's treatise that people live lives of quiet
desperation and had resolved not to be a member of the
silent majority.12

Seldes’ idealism about the profession was severely
shaken during his early years as a reporter. He often
recounted the story of the Silver Top Brewing Company, which
he considered his first encounter with corruption. He had
been working as a reporter for two weeks when he wrote a
story about the Brewing Company wagon being hit by a street
car. Seldes discovered after the paper had gone to press
that the name of the company had been deleted because Silver
Top was a large advertiser with the paper. He wrote,
"Immediately I recognized censorship and suppression."13

This was to be merely the first in a long line of
experiences that were to shatter Seldes' illusions and show
him that censorship and distortion were commonplace and that
newspapers were a business, not the public service he had
expected. Covering the police beat he discovered that the
press was corrupt, business was corrupt, and reporters were
contemptuous of the public whom they considered "suckers."
Little by little Seldes discovered the newspaper business
was not glamorous, as he had first thought.

Every working day on the Leader brought new

disillusions. 0n the occasions when my items were

suppressed or censored or changed to suit the

advertisers, politicians, and other sinister

forces then unknown to me, I usually protested

publicly, in this way adding unholy comic relief
to the office routine.“

21

These early years were very disillusioning for Seldes.
His colleagues taught him not to have faith in anything, yet
he admitted that they never succeeded in completely
destroying the ideals planted in his childhood. Instead,
their actions succeeded in reconfirming the need for
freethinking and non-conformity.1S

Fighting to retain his values Seldes found an outlet
for his idealism in the socialist press. He discovered
that socialist papers were the only ones prepared to print
stories that were honest and controversial. He gave a rape
story that the Leeee; would not print to a newspaper called
Justiee and the story caused a sensation.

My rape story was uniquely responsible for the

start of a socialist labor weekly in our town. I

learned then people wanted news that was generally

suppressed. I remembered this all my life.16

Seldes also found satisfaction in the reform movement.
He marched with the suffragists and tried unsuccessfully to
unionize the editorial department of his newspaper.
Eventually he gained a reputation as a radical among his
colleagues, who saw him associating with "the notorious, the
outcasts, the enemies of society."17

Considering Seldes’ radical reputation it is not
surprising that he was also drawn to the labor movement. His
pro-labor bias was evident as early as 1910 when he went to
work part-time for a labor paper: "I pointed out all that

was noble in common day jobs and said that all that America

was or hoped to be it owed to the workingman [sic]."18 The

22
labor paper turned out to be a blackmail scam, with the
publisher being paid off not to incite the workers, and when
Seldes was offered a share of the business he declined.

I was an idealist then. I believed all the world's

ills could be cured by an honest press. I told him

I didn’t mind writing articles for him [the

publisher] because what I wrote I believed inh’but

I would not become a partner in his buSIness.

Seldes continued to learn that the daily press was
corrupt. He had many stories suppressed including an expose
of the United States Steel Corporation. In 1910 the
corporation stopped employing American workers and began
hiring immigrants from Eastern Europe because they would
work for lower wages.

Seldes expressed outrage and concern in his later books
when reflecting on how the press functioned during these
years, but at the time he was not yet the vocal critic that
was to emerge later. This may be that despite all the
disillusionment Seldes found the newspaper business fun. He
wrote in Tel; The Tttth eng Run (1953) that in the early
days of his reporting he didn't really consider the causes
and results of things. The years passed quickly and he was
swept away in the adventure and excitement of his life as a
reporter. He appears to have been a socially conscious
reporter, but his encounters with people and places left
very little time for thought or active protest.

From the first day...all my newspaper days seemed

to be great days, and there was fun, adventure,

excitement, the satisfaction of being always at
the focus of great events, a world in change: and

23

these forces enslaved me just as circumstances

enslaved other men to a lifetime of making a

living. 2°

This recollection varies slightly to an admission
Seldes' made later in the same book. He wrote that despite
the fun of his job, he thought deeply about the battle
between his profession and his ideals. In 1911 he read the
last installment of "The American Newspaper" series by Will
Irwin, which dealt with press corruption in Pittsburgh and
Cincinnati. "His revelations shocked me more than anything
that had happened to me or that I had heard about."21

Something happened to me the day I read it. It is

possible that I had been rationalizing the evils I

had seen: perhaps I had even compromised a little,

or closed my eyes conveniently, or made excuses,

or found a way to get along like most men do.22

It is feasible that Seldes both enjoyed the fun of
being a reporter while at the same time was concerned at how
the press functioned. Seldes admitted that he found he had
to compromise his ideals. He experienced constant conflict
between his ideals of the press and the reality of the
newsroom and he sought refuge in literature, spending hours
at the library reading dramatists Shaw and Ibsen.

Although Seldes had mixed feelings about his profession
he continued as a reporter, progressing from the Leader to
copy editor on the Pittsburgh Post. In 1912, at the urging
of his brother, Seldes took a year off to attend Harvard

University and study literature. He was twenty-two years

old when he entered the special non-graduating program,

24

which allowed students without high school diplomas to
undertake a year of study with the understanding they would
not be able to graduate from the university. Harvard was
an enchanted period for Seldes, who as a frustrated writer
and dramatist revelled in studying literature and drama
full-time. His enthusiasm for the theatre was revealed in a
February 18, 1913, letter to Judith Randorf, a close friend
of the family, in which he wrote that he attended the opera
every night for a week.23

At the completion of his year of study Seldes returned
to the newspaper business and in 1916 moved to New York City
to freelance for the he! Yetk Wetl . The following year, he
quit the fletlg and sailed for England, hoping to find work
reporting the European war. He got a job in the London
office of the United Press, and after the United States
entered the war in 1917, Seldes became a member of the press
section of the American Expeditionary Forces. His
colleagues in the press section included renowned
journalists and writers Damon Runyon, Floyd Gibbons and
Heywood Broun.

The war continued for seven months after Seldes joined
the press corp and when the conflict ended on November 11,
1918, he remained in Europe. He became a foreign
correspondent and later Berlin Bureau Chief for the Cthago
Tttbhhe. During his years in Europe he gained a reputation

as a "fair and independent reporter" and "a born

25
newspaperman with a love for a front page story."“ His
more well-known exploits included being expelled from Russia
in 1923 for his reporting of the Bolshevik purges; being the
only witness to the French bombardment of Damascus in 1925:
and being thrown out of Italy by Mussolini.

Seldes returned to the United States in 1927 and, still
with the Chicago Tribune, was sent by Colonel McCormick to
investigate rumors that war between Mexico and the United
States was imminent. It was at the completion of this
assignment that he resolved to leave the newspaper business
for good. He had been disillusioned for several years with
how the press functioned in Europe and had consoled himself
with the thought that it was not the same in the United
States. His experience in Mexico, however, showed him that
United States publishers indulged in the same censorship and
suppression he had witnessed in European countries.

Seldes decided to leave journalism after Mexico, but it
was several months before he actually quit the Chicago
Tribune. Soon after he tended his resignation he was
offered a book contract by his brother’s agent.

The contract was arranged by Seldes' younger brother
Gilbert, who indirectly assisted Seldes several times in his
writing career. The two brothers were very different in
taste and temperament and spent most of their lives apart,
but the relationship between the two of them provided an

interesting insight into Seldes’ character.

26

Seldes appears to have felt competitive with Gilbert,
who was a successful writer and drama critic. Gilbert went
to Harvard, where he was an editor of the Hetyerg Reyiew.
He later became an editor of the literary magazine Dial,
authored several books and became a professor at the
University of Pennsylvania. Gilbert had a polish and
sophistication that was lacking in his elder brother.
Seldes never quite fit into the more cosmopolitan world of
his brother, as a letter he wrote to a family friend
indicates. He wrote: "Gilbert still says sarcastic things
about his degenerative socialist of a brother."25

The differences between the brothers were highlighted
in an article Seldes wrote for The New York Observer in
1929.

Gilbert was for literature: I was for life.

Gilbert was for books; I was for bloodshed. He

studied his humanity in cloistered aloofness, I

preferred mine in man at his worst. Gilbert

should have been the family newspaperman.

Although ... our formative years were alike, we

are entirely different. Gilbert always had push

and go and an adeaPate journalistic ego, while I

was, and am, shy.
Both brothers used the name Seldes so it is hardly
surprising that in literary circles their names were
confused, something that both brothers disliked intensely.a'
Seldes felt his own work was obscured by his brother's
achievements and he wrote: "For ten years I have heard

myself introduced and talked about as Gilbert's brother. I

shall never die happy until once I hear him called George’s

27
brother. I may have to hire a man to do it."28

The sense of inferiority that Seldes felt toward his
brother was noted by Elizabeth Mehren in her 1985 feature
story on Seldes when she wrote: "Even today, Seldes hovers
under a minor cloud of inferiority when then subject of
Gilbert, author of ”The Seven Lively Arts," is raised."29

Whether the competition between the brothers was mutual
is unknown. What is certain, however, is that Gilbert got
Seldes’ his first book contract and later it was through
contacts of Gilbert's that Seldes was offered work with the
magazine geh.

Seldes quit the Chicage Ttibune in 1928 and devoted the
following years to writing, travelling and painting. He was
a prolific, if somewhat repetitive, writer and produced ten
books in the following ten years.

It was also during his early years as a writer that
Seldes met his future wife, Helen Larkin. From Seldes’
account they did not hit it off when they were first
introduced to each other at a party in Paris in 1929.

Helen, who was 14 years Seldes junior, was studying physics
at the Sorbonne in Paris and planned to go to Russia to work
with Pavlov. Seldes, upon learning of Helen's plans took
the opportunity to tell her all about the difficulties and
terrors of the soviet regime. Helen appears to have been
sympathetic to the ideal of communism and was so disgusted

by Seldes' comments that she swore never see him again.

28
This was not to be. They met again in Paris in 1932 and
were married three weeks later.

Helen appears to have been Seldes' loyal supporter
during their 40 years of marriage. There is no indication
that she continued her studies in physics and instead
accompanied Seldes to Spain during the civil war and later
co-edited In Fact.

Seldes continued to write and followed world news
closely. In 1936 he, along with Ernest Hemingway and others
from the League of American Writers, became concerned that
news about the Spanish Civil War was being misrepresented in
the daily papers. So great was Seldes’ concern that he
volunteered to became a war correspondent for the New York
geet in 1937, and he and Helen spent the next three years
writing about the war.

Seldes came to believe that the battle was not one of
Communism against Democracy, as was commonly believed, but
rather Fascism against freedom of the Spanish People.
Further, he felt that the Spanish Civil War was a prelude to
a greater, world-wide conflict.

Seldes became completely disillusioned with the
performance of the mainstream press, which he felt
suppressed and distorted the news about Spain in presenting
only the pro-Fascist side. He looked around for alternative
forums for his work and increasingly only wrote for the left

wing magazines. He toyed with the idea of starting his own

29
newsletter that would expose the mainstream press, but he
lacked the funds.

In 1940 Seldes was approached by a neighbor, Bruce
Minton, who professed to be equally disgusted with the
performance of the mainstream press, and offered to finance
the publication of an independent newsletter that would
uncover lies in the daily press. Seldes was enthusiastic
and began work immediately. He declared that the newsletter
would act as "an antidote for falsehoods in the daily press"
and that it would be committed to "exposing fascism, the
corrupt press, the labor baiter and all enemies of the

W” In the original prospectus he wrote:

American peOple.
"The viewpoint of In fleet is simple: it is in favor of every
idea movement and organization that is for what we
carelessly call liberalism, democracy, and progress."31
Using labor union circulation lists, Seldes and Minton
began producing a weekly edition of Tn Fact. The two
editors, however, increasingly quarrelled over the content
of the paper and in 1941 Minton quit. Several years later
it was revealed that Minton was a member of the Communist
Party who had hoped to use In Fact as a party mouthpiece.
In a signed confession Minton explained that the party
wanted to reach a wider audience and thought it would be
wise to use a non-Communist person as a front:32

Unfortunately for the Communist party they found Seldes too

difficult to control. He was jealous of his intellectual

3O
freedom and his copy "was too often opposed to the official
communist position.“” Minton concluded that "his [Seldes']
integrity, his personal honesty and forthrightness, his
convictions were such that the Party was helpless."“

After Minton's departure Seldes continued with In Fact,
which increased in circulation. Subscribers from around the
country submitted articles to the newsletter, and Seldes
took up dozens of causes. He had the support of politicians
such as Harold Ickes and Harry Truman, and his
correspondence included letters from writers Theodore
Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, and journalists Eric Sevareid,
Bruce Blixan and Oswald Garrison Villard. Newsletter
circulation peeked in 1946 at 176,000 but fell off
rapidlyJ35 Seldes began having difficulty attracting
readers, and literary critic Robert Sobel suggested that
people were no longer interested in the issues Seldes was
raising. In the cold war climate of post-war America, Seldes
and his newsletter were attacked from both ends of the
political spectrum. On the one hand, he was increasingly
labelled a Communist by the right for his support of labor
and on the other hand, he claimed he was boycotted by
American Communists, who objected to his outspoken viewsfi36
1h_Eeet couldn't survive under the double assault and Seldes
was forced to suspend the newsletter in 1950.

Three years later Seldes was asked to appear before

Senator Joseph McCarthy to explain any Communist

31
affiliations of 1h_£eet. Seldes produced Minton’s confession
and was exonerated, but the experience appears to have had a
profound effect on him. This effect was apparent in letters
Seldes wrote to someone named "Tim W." in November and
December 1957. Seldes wrote that he and Helen had been
"through such a cruel experience" and warned Tim, who wrote
for an unnamed radical magazine, that he should be clear
about his political allegiances. In the letters Seldes
explained that he was a Socialist, not a Communist. He made
the point forcibly, which is a departure from the tolerant
attitude he displayed to the extreme left during his Ih Feet
days.

The label of Communist was to dog Seldes’ steps, and
although he was cleared by McCarthy he continued to be
persecuted for his views and his association with In Fact.
In the 19505 and 19605 he had difficulty getting publishers
for his books. He continued to travel but even had
difficulty obtaining a passport. Correspondence between
Seldes and the passport office indicate that it took him 12
months to get permission to travel abroad in 1956. A letter
dated August 2, 1956, from Francis Knight, director of the
Passport Office, denied Seldes’ request for a passport
because "Th Feet was cited as a Communist front in the March
29, 1944, report of the special committee on UnAmerican
activities in the House of Representatives."37

The Seldes retired to Vermont and continued to write,

32
paint and garden, surviving on the royalties from his books.
They started vacationing in their beloved Spain after the
death of Franco and continued until Helen’s death in 1979.
The following year Seldes appeared as a narrator in the
movie geee, which told the story of the radical journalist
Jack Reid, whom Seldes had met at Harvard. After his movie
debut, Seldes was re-discovered by the journalism community
and received his first national award for professional
excellence from the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication (AEJMC). In 1987 he published Witness
te a eehtuty, a book which detailed his earlier escapades in
Europe without the bitter attacks at the press that
characterized his earlier work. Seldes, who turned 101 in
September 1991, still lives in his home in Vermont and is

cared for by a host of neighbors.

SUMMARY

By providing this brief biography of Seldes’ life the
following six experiences can be placed in the context of
Seldes' personal and philosophical background. It appears
that in many ways Seldes’ philosophies were modelled on that
of his idealistic father. He absorbed his father’s liberal
utopian belief systems and it was on this foundation that
Seldes' life of protest began.

I see now that my more than forty journalistic

years, with a few short and minor interludes, have

been protest and defense, a sort of forced payment
for the behavior pattern which was set for me by

33

others and which probably made my first views and
actions inevitable:38

The evolution of Seldes' career as a gadfly did not
come automatically. It took two decades as a journalist and
foreign correspondent to reinforce and redefine the patterns
of his childhood. Several experiences contributed to his
growth into a gadfly and the first of those experiences was

the First World War.

34

NOTES -- CHAPTER 2

1- George Seldes, Tell_the_1rutb_and_gun (New York:
Greenburg Publisher, 1953), 1.

2. George Seldes, Witness te e Cehtuty (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 4.

3. Ibid., 7.

4. Ibid., 8.

5. Tel; the Teeth ehd Ruh, xxi.
6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., xx.

8. Eitne§s_t2_a_gentsrr. 13.

9. Ibid., 11.

10. Ibid., 13.

11. George Seldes, Yee eeh’t Print That (New York: Payson
and Clarke Ltd., 1929), 11.

12. George Seldes, flexe; Tire ot Ptotestihg (New York:Lyle
Stuart inc., 1968), 11.

13. Tell the Teeth and Run, 3.
14. Ibid., 15.
15. Ibid., 14.
16. Ibid., 17.
17- fl1§n§§§_£9_e_§enL2£Y. 30-
18. Yes eee't 2:13; That, 237.

19. Ibid., 238.

20. Tell_tbe;lrutb_and_fiun. 1.

35
21. Ibid., 18.
22. Ibid.

23. George Seldes, to Judith Randorf, 18 February 1913,
Transcript in the hand of George Seldes, Special
Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.

24. Chieege Tribune, 28 July 1925 and New Republic, 8 May,
1929, 310.

25. George Seldes to Judith Randorf, 18 February 1913.
Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

26. The Nee goth Ohseteer, 12 June 1929.
27. New Ev 'n ournal, 10 June 1933. Gilbert wrote

in the preface to his review of World Pahorama that he
disliked intensely being muddled up with George.

28. Ibid.
29. Elizabeth Mehren, "George Seldes at 94: A Living

Panorama of World History," Los Angeles Times, 12 June 1985.
Part V, 1.

30. Th_£eet, 20 May 1940.
31. Tp_Eeet, 9 June 1941.

32. Copy of testimonial made by Richard Bransten alias
Bruce Minton on 15 September 1953. Special Collections,
Philadelphia.
33. Ibid., 3.
34. Ibid., 4.

35. George Seldes claimed that In Fact was supported by
mass union subscription. Never Tire of Protesting, 26.

36. heyet Tite et Ptotestipg, 195.

37. Francis Knight, to George Seldes, 2 August 1956.
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

38. Tel; the Teeth end Ben, vii.

CHAPTER 3

FIRST WORLD WAR

The first in the series of significant experiences for
Seldes on his path to becoming a gadfly and press critic was
the First World War, which ravaged Europe from 1914 to 1918.
To Seldes, who joined the American Expeditionary Forces
Press Corp in 1918, the war was initially a great adventure
and a chance to write with some of the most prestigious
journalists of the era. Later, however, the experience was
to provide a basis for Seldes' criticisms against press

censorship and big business.

THE PRESS CORP

Seldes sailed for Europe in October 1916, and on his
arrival secured a job with the United Press offices in
London. In July 1917, the U.S. Embassy invited Americans to
volunteer for war service, and Seldes and his brother, who
was also in London, signed up. Seldes believed strongly in
the Allies’ fight and wrote, "I wanted somehow to be in
Wilson’s (and my) great war for democracy."1 Neither
brother was called and Floyd Gibbons, who had met Seldes in

London, arranged for Seldes to work as the sole

36

37
representative of the Chicege Trihene in Paris.

While in Paris, Seldes met Edward Marshall, a Randolph
Hearst war correspondent during the Spanish American War who
had been with Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. Marshall
ran his own syndicate and shared offices with the ehieege
Tribuhe. Seldes wrote that Marshall was one of the most
interesting men he had met. During their time together in
Paris Marshall told Seldes stories about the Spanish
American War and how lies in the press that had become
accepted as historical fact. Marshall said the biggest lie
of the Spanish American War was T.R. Roosevelt’s charge up
San Juan Hill, which Marshall claimed never took place.
Roosevelt walked up the hill, according to Marshall, and was
met at the top by a brigade of African-American soldiers.

Seldes had never heard these alternative versions of
historic events and had never questioned the authenticity of
historic facts. He wrote:

Long before there was any muckraking in world

journalism or even investigative reporting,

Marshall had tried to do his best to set the

historic record straight.2
Seldes was so impressed by what Marshall had to say that he
emulated the old muckraker sixty years later by writing Eeee
the goes th't Qhehge Histoty (1976). The book was an expose
of the historic events that Seldes' had covered as a
reporter and it was his attempt to "set the historic record

straight."

Marshall seems to have been equally impressed with

38
Seldes and arranged for Seldes' appointment to the press
corp of General Pershing, commander of the American Forces.
On May 8, 1918, Seldes officially became a member of
Pershing’s G-2-D press section.

Being appointed to Pershing's press corp was a dream-
come-true for Seldes, who had been seduced by the images of
dashing foreign correspondents such as Richard Harding
Davis. Seldes wrote: "Every newspaperman [sic] in the
civilized world, I believe, would have given most of his
fortune and several years of his life...to be a member of
Pershing’s Army Press Section."3 Seldes saw the life of a
war correspondent as glamorous and romantic and he wrote
that he would have covered the war for only "my bread and a
hall bedroom."

When I joined General Pershing's G-2-D, the press

corps of the American Army in France, the great,

gorgeous, glamorous, roaring and romantic

tradition of the war correspondent danced like a

specter on our typewriter keys.“

Seldes became one of twenty-one reporters covering the
war. Although the number of reporters remained constant,

over one hundred journalists were members of the corp at
various times. Seldes represented a syndicate that served,
among others, the etieptic Constitution, the Los Angeles
Tieee and The nettoit Etee Eress.5 Seldes’ colleagues in
the corp included Floyd Gibbons, Damon Runyun, Heywood
Broun, William Allen White, Will Irwin and Edwin L. James.

These were the elite of American journalists: they were the

39

brightest and most well-known stars of the era. It is
curious that Seldes found himself among them. He was by no
means a novice, having served an eight-year apprenticeship
in the newsrooms of Pittsburgh and New York, but he was
still an unknown. Seldes himself admitted that it was
rather odd to find himself in such prestigious company. The
original members of the corp were all famous, he wrote, and
their replacements were all star reporters "with one
exception, the present writer of these adventures."6

Six months prior to Seldes joining the unit the press
corp had been reorganized to cope with discipline problems
among the journalists who resisted military censorship. The
new arrivals didn't question authority or military
censorship and were known as "impatient, impulsive and
inexperienced," according to historian Emmet Crozier.7
Seldes, who was among this brash new generation of
reporters, observed that the majority of his colleagues were
untroubled by a social conscience.

So far as I know, no one cared a damn about

anything at all except getting the news,

preferably getting it first, and not necessarily

getting it too objectively or too truthfully.8

Seldes found that all the reporters were neutral: "No
one took a stand. No one took sides. No one I can remember
during those 18 months [Seldes was also a member of the corp
several months after the war ended] ever spoke seriously_

about a serious issue or a great event."9 Further, no one

ever questioned the Allies "rightness" in the war and anyone

40
who doubted "Wilson’s crusade to make the world safe for
democracy" was considered socialist, pacifist and

unAmerican.1o

Seldes, while making these observations,
admitted in his 1943 book Eteeeem ef the Ptess that he too
believed totally in the Allied cause. It was not until
December 1918 "when I came into Coblenz with the American
Army that I realized how fooled I had been by all those
years of propaganda."11
In his recollections of the corp Seldes implied that he
was the only one with a social conscience. He also claimed
that no one in the section had a reputation of being a
radical or a liberal.12 This is somewhat surprising
particularly when he admitted that the press corp included
the famous foreign correspondent Floyd Gibbons, the critical
journalist Heywood Broun and the muckraker Will Irwin, who
had written the expose on press censorship that had so
profoundly affected Seldes in his Pittsburgh days. Seldes
acknowledged the presence of these reporters when he wrote:
"There were at least two famous writers of the muckraking
era among us, but neither of them any longer wanted to
expose anything, or right any wrong, or even to alarm
anyone."13 This may be true since many of the troublemakers
were removed when the unit was reorganized in November 1917.
However, it is difficult to believe that vocal Gibbons,

Broun and Irwin, who must have been among the new intake of

reporters if they wrote with Seldes, would keep quiet about

41
corrupt press coverage of the war.

Seldes didn’t protest coverage of the war until many
years later. He claimed that he didn't learn of the lies
until after 1918, so his silence may have been the result of
ignorance. And perhaps he was caught up in covering the war
to question it too deeply. Furthermore, other reporters'
neutrality may have influenced his attitude. After all, he
was the youngest of the regulars and probably fairly
impressionable when in the company of men whose names graced
the front pages of the nation's newspapers. In addition,
even if Seldes had been aware of the corruption of the war
news, he had already demonstrated, as a cub reporter in
Pittsburgh, an ability to rationalize away uncomfortable
realities. This ability to evade the realities of certain
events during these earlier years may be responsible for his
later incongruent memories of those same events.

Although Seldes deplored the lack of social
consciousness displayed by those in the corp, he found
several journalists he admired and whose influence is
reflected in his later work.

There was the dashing and brave Floyd Gibbons, who was
in charge of the Chieege Trihune foreign correspondents.
Nothing stopped him from a good story, and he scooped his
rivals across the continent for more than 20 years, taking
incredible risks to file stories.

Floyd Gibbons, as I have said often, was the best
reporter of this time, one of the best of all

42

times... Floyd was tough physically and he had a

tough mind. It was frequently brilliant in a hard

way.“

To Seldes, Gibbons was all that was glamorous about the
profession and romantic about war correspondents. "He was
not a literary writer like Stephen Crane, but he could play
the part of Richard Harding Davis brilliantly."15

Heywood Broun, who later started a newspaper guild in
1934, also made an impact on Seldes. The "iconoclast" and
"individualist" Broun was "so obviously a non-conformist"
that Seldes admired him tremendously.

It was his general non-conformity in the most

conforming of all worlds that made me admire him

rather than any indication he was a liberal and

not a cynic, a humanitarian and not a wise-

cracker.“

Seldes was impressed by Broun because he appeared to be a
man with a social conscience who did not compromise.
Neither did Ruth Hale, Broun’s wife, who was known as a
militant feminist and believed, like Seldes, that newspaper
offices should be unionized.

These early meetings with Marshall, Broun, Hale and
Gibbons had an impact on Seldes and it is possible to see
links between his work and theirs: Seldes went on to become
an investigative reporter and revisionist historian like
Marshall, a dashing journalist like Gibbons, a non-
conformist press critic like Broun, and a unionist like

Hale. It is likely that these people influenced his

education as a press critic.

43
WARTIME CENSORSHIP

Seldes’ war experiences were more than just meeting
interesting people. He also learned a great deal about the
press and censorship and now, instead of editors, it was the
war censors who gutted his copy. Although Seldes confessed
that he was unaware of the allied propaganda during the war,
he wrote sixty years later that it was the first time that
he had come up against mass-orchestrated propaganda. The
war department dictated what reporters would write and
Seldes, partially quoting Lord Ponsonby, wrote:

We all lied about the war...‘in all wars truth is

the first casualty’...The villian is not the war

correspondent in most cases - it is the War

Department, the propaganda department which may
style itself "office of information.“17

In an earlier first draft of Teii the Truth eed Run
(undated) Seldes wrote:

We all lied about the war. Or, rather we half

lied. Every day every one of the twenty war

correspondents...wrote a cable dispatch or a mail

story reporting heroism and victory on land on sea

and in the air. That there was cowardice, defeat,

mutiny, suicide as well was known to all of us,

but even if censorship did not exist none would

have wanted to speak about such things.18

In the first version of this admission Seldes put more
blame on the War Department than in the later draft when he
seemed to apportion some responsibility to the journalists
for not telling the whole story. Still, Seldes noted that
the Office of War Information was so concerned the war be
presented positively that it censored the journalists’ copy

for anything unpatriotic or pacifist, and the interpretation

44
of what fit these categories was fairly broad. Seldes
discovered that even writing about soldiers singing on the
way to battle was not acceptable. "I thought it the
grandest thing I ever could write about the spirit of our
men. Nothing during the war had so stirred me."19 Yet his
article was cut by the censors because they thought it was
pacifist propaganda.

Nothing of the true nature of the war was to be
revealed to the public back home. The war was protracted,
dirty and slow, according to Seldes. There were no glorious
occasions or spectacular events, no drama or color, just a
slow grinding of the enemy into the mud. Somehow, reporters
had to churn out stories of heroism and valor and dared not
write one word of the horror and suffering and death.
Seldes wrote:

I now realize that we were told nothing but

buncombe, that we were shown nothing of the

realities of the war, that we were in short,

merely part of the great allied propaganda machine

whose purpose was to sustain morale at all costs

and help drag unwilling America into the

slaughter . 2°

The deceit practiced by the military concerned Seldes,
but in hindsight he was more distressed by his profession’s
complicity: ”By the time our American press corp went to the
front everything was cut and dried and powdered for us. We
saw little, heard little, and had to make mountains of news

out of molehills of information for weeks and weeks."21

Seldes made news out of the molehills but in his

45

subsequent books he wrote about previously—censored events.
For example, he disagreed with the official account of the
battle of Saint Mihiel, which had been presented as a Allied
victory in all the newspapers and history books. According
to Seldes, there never was a battle because the German
troops had heard plans about the attack and left the city
several days earlier. It is important to note that Seldes’
claim is substantiated by historian M.L. Stein, who wrote:
"The first person to enter Saint-Mihiel after the Germans
abandoned it was George Seldes, correspondent for the
Marshall syndicate."22

By far the biggest suppressed story of the war for
Seldes was his interview with German General Paul Von
Hindenburg on Armistice day. Seldes described how he and
three of his colleagues violated the Armistice and crossed
enemy lines seeking an interview with the German Field
Marshall. On the way they got caught up in the Soviet-
backed German revolution that gripped the country
immediately after the armistice was declared. With the
assistance of some of these revolutionary sailors, who had
mutinied and declared themselves the government of
Frankfurt, Seldes and his colleagues were able to obtain an
interview with Von Hindenburg at Kassel.

On their return to France with the world scoop, the
French requested that those who violated the armistice

should be court martialled and shot, claiming it was treason

46
to enter Germany while a state of war still technically
existed. Pershing spared the reporters’ lives but insisted
that the story be suppressed;23 This version of events is
slightly different to those related in Witheee te e eehtuty
(1987), when Seldes wrote that the story was suppressed as a
result of pressure by the press corp and, in particular, by
the representative of the hey Xeth Times, Edwin James, who
objected to Seldes getting a scoop on the other
syndicates.“

And a scoop it was. During the interview, Hindenburg
confessed that Germany had lost the war not because of any
conspiracy by the Jews or Communists, as was commonly
rumored, but because of the military superiority of the U.S.
forces. Seldes quoted Hindenburg as saying; "I must really
say that the British food blockade of 1917 and the American
attack decided the war for the Allies.“-5

This was the biggest story of the war certainly

the most important news story of my journalistic

three-quarters of a century, an important

paragraph in the history not only of the United

States, but of the world, and so far as I know it

has never been published by anxpne but me and

appears 1n no histor1cal work.

Seldes felt that the interview was wrongly suppressed
and that if it had been published then perhaps the Nazi
platform, which exploited the rumors about a Jewish
conspiracy against Germany during the First World War, would

have been undermined.

If the Hindenburg confession had been passed by
Pershing’s censors at the time, it would have been

47

headlined in every country...and undoubtedly would

have made a lasting impression on millions of

people...I believe it would have destroyed the

main planks of the platform on which Hitler rose

to power, it would have prevented World War

II,...and it would have changed the future of all

mankind . 27

The war ended, and according to Seldes, "The armistice
liberated our minds: suddenly we were able to question what
we had seen. But up to then it had been living an adventure
and writing it patriotically - the greatest adventure in our
time . "28

The reality of the great adventure struck home when
they saw the devastation that war had brought to the people
and property of Europe. On a battlefield in France, Seldes
and three of his colleagues swore an oath that they would do
all they could to prevent another war. They pledged

to tell the world..."the true facts" about the

war, so there would be no more wars...we made

statements to each other which could be called a

declaration of pacifism and I thought mine was for
my lifetime."’9

SELDES’ CRITICISMS OF PRESS COVERAGE OF THE WAR
Seldes told the truth about the war ten years later.
He devoted a chapter to the war and military censorship in
his first book Tee eah’t Erint Thet (1929), but later
addressed one of the key issues, that of the association of
the munitions industry with the war, in 1934. In Blood and
gtetite he described how the international cartels had

supplied munitions to all sides of the war and prolonged the

48

conflict for their own mercenary gain. Further, he claimed
that they had paid the press to distort the truth about it.
The book detailed in length the international cartels who,
regardless of nationality, continued to supply the enemy
during the war.

The Krupps who gave their fuses to Vickers for a

royalty, the Americans who sold their superior

guns and armor to friend and enemy alike, the

French who shipped poison gas to Germany during

the war and the Germans who shipped steel to

France, were big businessmen, doing business as

usual, and good business is good patriotism and

never lacking in rewardst3o

Seldes accused international munitions companies of
starting the war through their greed and claimed that big
business influenced the U.S. government policy toward the
European War.

In 1914 the neutrality of the United States became

a vital question for Europe. But Big Business won

easily. The "sell to both sides" advocates had no

difficulty in persuading government officials they

were right.31
Seldes saw the same business influence over war policy in
France when the French government refused to allow its
military to bomb the Briery iron and steel basin, from which
the Germans were extracting material to continue the war. A
French investigation revealed in 1919:

Either owing to international solidarity of the

metal industrialists, or for the purpose of

safeguarding private interests, the order was

given by our military heads not to bombard the

Briey Basin works exploited by the enemy during

the war . 32

Seldes produced further evidence of the complicity of

49

big business in manipulating the war in his book Freedom of
the EI§§8 (1937). He wrote that Woodrow Wilson confessed on
September 5, 1919, that "commercialism, money, big business,
was [sic] responsible for the war."33 Seldes further
claimed that the American Ambassador to England cabled
Woodrow Wilson to enter the war to save Morgan Company
investments. Seldes cited part of the text of Ambassador
Page’s Cable.
The pressure of this approaching crisis has gone
beyond the ability of the Morgan financial agency
for the British and French Governments...It is not
improbable that the only way of maintaining our
present pre-eminent trade position and averting a
panic is by declaring war on Germany.“
The public release of this cable disillusioned Seldes
about the First World War, a war he had thought was for
democracy.35

As Seldes began to realize the extent of big business
involvement in the war, he condemned the hypocritical nature
of the big companies who claimed to be patriotic. He
concluded in Iron, Blood and Profits (1934):

The World War has proven...that war is bad

business for all countries, all men:...it has

shown that armaments are an incentive, one of the

main causes of war and no guarantee for

peace: that preparedness is the best way to get

war: that profits, not patriotism is the motive of

the armament-makers and their subsidized patriotic

societies . 3‘

Yet, big businesses didn’t create war all by

themselves. Seldes also blamed the press, claiming that the

munitions industry was able to control world opinion through

50

their ownership of a large part of the world’s press.

The corruption of public opinion by the armament-

makers has been one of the great secrets of the

past fifty years. When newspapers in the name of

patriotism attacked pacifists as traitors, when

they sabotaged international conferences and

ridiculed world peace movements, no one suspected

them of being owned by the munitions

manufacturers . 37

Industries’ attempt to sabotage peace and control world
opinion through ownership of the press during the First
World War was to comprise a major plank in Seldes’
criticisms of the establishment. Yet, he still wrote
optimistically about the legacy of the First World War.

All the...peoples...feel that the last great war

has been fought and not in vain, because the great

peace which is to last forever and was worth the

sacrifice of all the youth and all the treasure of

the generation...Today we live in the golden age

when men need no longer kill and die, and hate and

death need never returnfi38

Unfortunately death and war were to return to devastate
the continent just four years after he had written this, and
Seldes blamed the war on the greedy and reactionary nature
of big business. As America prepared to go to war in 1940
Seldes fought conscription, claiming that it was against the
best interests of the American public. He became an
advocate of peace insisting that the war was simply big
business moving to quell the growing voice of labor and
liberalism. In his newsletter, In Fact, he named American
industrial companies that shared technology with the

Germans. He also accused the Standard Oil Company of

treason because it provided gasoline to the Axis countries

51

and withheld a synthetic rubber patent from the U.S.
government because of its ties with the German rubber
company I . F . Farben . 39

By the time the Second World War arrived, Seldes had
come a long way from the young man who had viewed war as a
great adventure. In the First World War, he had supported
the Allies and believed in their fight for democracy. He
even became a part of the military propaganda machine that
churned out heroic reports of the war.

In the Second World War, he questioned the Allies’
involvement and he sought to reveal the truth about the war

with all its big business and political subterfuge.

SUMMARY

Seldes’ experiences in the First World War were
significant in his evolution as a gadfly on two levels:
Professionally, he made his mark as a war correspondent,
progressing from small town reporter to foreign
correspondent - one of the most glamorous jobs imaginable to
Seldes. He had changed from the parochial Pittsburgh
reporter, who had in 1915 accepted all reports of the First
World War as true, to a seasoned journalist who came to
recognize that much of the news about the war was censored.
Personally, he met Marshall, Broun, Hale and Gibbons whose
own idealogies paralleled his own. Perhaps these older,

more experienced, journalists served as role models for the

52
young idealistic reporter.

The war provided a foundation for Seldes upon which
other experiences were built. During the following years
Seldes was alerted to big business involvement in politics
and war and also to the connection between big business and
the press. That he wrote about his war experience many years
after the event suggests that the experience had a major
impact on his writing.

The war appeared to have been a threshold for Seldes,
who stepped through it into, not only a new stage of his
career, but also into a new era in Europe. As he covered
the Versaille Treaty he saw a new Europe evolving, one in
which he felt there was a world-wide conspiracy by the anti-
labor reactionary press intent upon destroying Woodrow
Wilson and his vision for the liberation of humankind. "It
was a conspiracy against all idealism, against democracy,
against the welfare of all the common people of all

nations . ""°

Seldes saw reactionism sweeping Europe in the
19205 and in no place was it more apparent than in Italy

under the dictator Benito MUssolini.

53

NOTES -- CHAPTER 3

1. George Seldes, Tell the Teeth ehe Run (New York:
Greenburg Publisher, 195), 28.

2. George Seldes, Witness to a Century (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 63.

3. Ibid., 69.

4. George Seldes, "No More Glory,"
5. Eitness_t2_a_§entsrx. 65.

6. Ibid., 69.

7. Emmet Crozier, 1914-1918 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1959), 174.

8. Tell the Teeth end Run, 41.
9- 1211:1218. 174-
10. Tell the Teeth ape Run, 42.

11. George Seldes, Ereeeem et the Eress (New York: Garden
City Publishing Co., Inc., 1937), 33.

12. Tell the Teeth and Run, 35.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 124.

15. Ibid., 125.

16. Ibid., 31.

17. Withese to a Centuey, 75.

18. George Seldes, Tell the Truth and Run first draft.
Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of

Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

19. George Seldes, a ’ r (New York: Payson
and Clarke, 1929), 23.

54

20. Colman McCarthy, "Seeking a Free Press," The Washington
Post, 3 May 1973, A26. McCarthy cited this passage from

Freedee et the Bee e.

21. George Seldes, Tell the Truth and Run, first draft,
(p10) Special Collections, Philadelphia.

22. M.L. Stein, Under Fire - The Story of American War
Correepeheeht (New York: Julian Messner, 1968), 73.

23. Tell the Truth and Run, 53.

24. Witness to a Centuey, 100.
25. Ibid., 99.

26. Ibid., 96.
27. Ibid., 100.

28. Tell the Truth and gun, 42.
29. Ibid., 54.

30. George Seldes, Teon, Bloee and Erofits (New York:
Harper Brothers Publishers, 1934), 2.

31. Ibid., 160.
32. Ibid., 84-85.

33. Eeeeeee of the Beess, 116.

34. Ibid., 117. Cited from the Nye Committee investigating
the munitions industry in 1934.

35. Tell the Teeth and hue, 228.

36. Ireal_n1egd_and_2refite. 325-326-
37. Ibid., 131.

38. George Seldes, World Panorama (New York: Blue Ribbon
Books, 1935), 10.

39. Th Eeet, 21 December 1942.
40. Tell_tbe_Trstb_and_Bsn. 60-

CHAPTER 4

ITALIAN FASCISM

After the end of the First World War Seldes stayed in

Europe. He became an assistant to the London correspondent

for the ehicage Teibune and then later was appointed
European correspondent for the Chieego Teibune. During the

following ten years he recorded the rise of modern post-war
Europe with its new political orders powered by radical new
ideologies. The void left by the destruction of centuries-
old-monarchies gave place to a struggle between
revolutionary Socialism and reactionary Fascism. It was in
Italy that Seldes documented the reality of Fascism - the
violence, the undermining of liberal and democratic values
and the increased censorship of the press. He saw beyond
the carefully constructed image of a successful Fascist
Italy to realize that Fascism posed a threat to, not only
his humanitarian and liberal values, but to democracies

throughout the world.

SELDES' EXPULSION
Seldes, as a roving European correspondent, visited

Italy four times before asking to be appointed there

55

56

permanently in 1924.1 He went to Rome a year after he had
been expelled from Russia for not submitting to Bolshevik
censorship, and he wrote:

I came to Italy with the same open mind I took to

Russia...I was probably more friendly to the idea

of fascism.2

There is some doubt as to whether Seldes really did go
to Rome with an open mind. In his book Witness to a Century
(1987) he wrote that on his way to his permanent position in
Italy he met up with William Bolitho, a fellow journalist
from Germany. Bolitho, who had been a correspondent in
Italy, convinced Seldes that Fascism was an empty ideology
based upon greed and violence and that Mussolini and his
Blackshirts were merely the army for big business interests.
He suggested that Seldes try to get the facts on the
assassination of Socialist leader, Giacomo Matteotti, who
was killed just before he revealed a connection between the
American Sinclair Oil Company and Fascists. "Go after this
story," Bolitho advised. "It will rock the world."3

Bolitho encouraged Seldes to pursue this story because
Bolitho felt that it was important to let the world know
that big business, both in Italy and abroad, subsidized
Fascism and controlled the press. Bolitho believed that
newspapers in America, particularly the Hearst papers with
their connections to big business, "were more likely to
print tourists reports of trains running on time than

stories about corporate interests bribing Mussolini."‘

57
Seldes was profoundly impressed with Bolitho’s argument.

Bolitho’s revelations convinced me that there were

no longer two valid sides to the fascist question,

as there still were to the communist question ...

Fascism was nothing but the special interests, the

big business, reaction marching with bayonets. It

has no philosophy, good or bad. It had nothing for

the people of Italy.5

The discussion with Bolitho was an important turning
point for Seldes, and he began to realize the implications
of Fascism.

My understanding [of Fascism] did not begin with

my own eyewitness experiences with Blackshirt

street fights, stabbings, shootings...the endless

bloodshed...and occasional murders;...I saw these

things but did not jump to conclusions. Their

meaning was made clear to me in conversations with

William Bolitho in Paris.6

If these recollections are correct, then it is doubtful
that Seldes went to Italy in 1924 with quite the open mind
that he claimed in his first book Yee Cah’t Peiht That
(1929).

Yet, it would have been understandable if Seldes had
gone to Italy initially receptive to Fascism. He wouldn’t
have been the only one. The governments of the world during
the 19205 had a largely positive view of Fascism. They saw
that it had organized a chaotic Italy, helped to balance the
national budget and encouraged foreign investment. Fascism
was given further credibility because of the existence of
Fascist parties in England and the United States, and the

ideology was seen as an alternative to the Russian menace of

Communism.

58

Whether Seldes initially viewed Fascism positively is
debatable. What is known is that he went to Rome expecting
to find journalistic freedom. He was soon disappointed.7
Seldes discovered on his arrival that his predecessor had
received, along with all other correspondents, a "monthly
bribe from Mussolini in the form of 5,000 free words via
telegraph or cable" to write positive reports of the Fascist
regime.8

Seldes sent a letter to the Paris office of the Chicago
Tribune stating that he would not be a party to corruption.
He was urged by the Tribune representative in Paris,
however, to make some sort of compromise by which he could
accept the bribe. Seldes was puzzled that the Tribune was
prepared to prostitute itself to the Italian government for
only 5,000 free cable words, which was worth only $200.
Later Seldes discovered that the owner of the Tribune,
Colonial McCormick, resented having to pay for anything in
which he was not particularly interested and this included
European news. The Teibene correspondents therefore were
encouraged to accept the Italian "bonus."9

Bribery was not all that Seldes had to contend with.
He discovered that, like Russia, there was censorship in
Italy. Cables were intercepted, altered or delayed, and he
was cautioned by his colleagues not to write anything
uncomplimentary about Fascism or he would face expulsion.

Despite the warning Seldes fell foul of the Italian

59
government only weeks after his arrival when he reported on
street riots and Blackshirt beatings. He was told by the
American Ambassador that Mussolini didn’t like his work.
Seldes responded with a letter to the foreign office
explaining why it was incumbent upon him to give more than
the official line.

We are required to give the facts, to relate

happenings: not vieWpoints of foreign governments,

but facts of interest to the American viewpoint.10
Seldes would not be intimidated into modifying his cables:

Despite the threat of deportation my dispatches

never toned down the news, never aimed to

apologize for violence or veneer with propaganda

favorable to the Fascisti [sic] certain acts of

which they were proud at home but which made a bad

impression abroad.

Seldes continued his reports but the situation came to
a climax two months later when he discovered information
that directly implicated Mussolini in the assassination of
Giacomo Matteotti. Seldes claimed to have documentary
evidence that Mussolini had ordered the execution. The
story behind the assassination was common knowledge in
Italy, but it had not been published abroad because of
censorship.

The Matteotti case was the "biggest news item in
Italy," according to Seldes, because it showed Mussolini for
the assassin he was. Seldes smuggled the story out of Italy
to America via Paris. He warned the Paris paper not to

publish the story in Europe because of the danger to
himself. The Eeeie_Teihehe published it, however, and as a

60
direct result Seldes was expelled from Italy.

An Associated Press dispatch reported the Italian
government’s explanation for the expulsion: It claimed
Seldes was asked to leave Italy because he was depicting the
Mussolini government "in the worst possible light and that
he presented in his dispatches the views of the political

antagonists of Premier Mussolini."12

Seldes denied having
met with any members of Mussolini’s opposition. He claimed
in a press release that "most of my information came from
the most reliable American and British sources...untainted

"u Seldes also dismissed the Italian

by party prejudice.
accusations of his dispatches being unfair, biased and a
tool of the minorities as lies. He stated that his only
crime was to have written the truth for the American
public.“

Seldes, having publicly criticized Italian Fascism,
began to realize that the reactionary ideology had strong
political and business allies. He discovered this when he
wrote to the American Embassy in Italy seeking assistance in
getting his Italian aide, Camillo Cianfarra, out of Rome.
The embassy failed to help and Cianfarra was so badly beaten
up by Fascists that he died of his injuries. Seldes, angry
at the diplomats, declared they were in the pay of big
businesses in America who supported Fascism. He wrote that

the American embassy was nothing more than the political arm

of international big business who rationalized their non-

61
action by claiming that all non-Fascists were Communists.

Unfortunately the U.S. Embassy in Rome was at this
time...in the hands of self-styled diplomats...who
were in reality an American brand of Fascisti.
Ambassadors and ministers representing the United
States were the worst offenders in labeling,
branding, name calling: liberals and especially
Socialists were all called "Reds" and "Communists"
and therefore everything done against them was
justified.15

Seldes’ expulsion caused an explosion of protest from
several of his fellow correspondents, who lodged an official
complaint with the Italian government and publicized their
displeasure in their newspapers. The only representatives
who did not protest were from the heeeYork Tieee and the
Associated Press, and Seldes condemned them for suppressing
the news and supporting Fascism.16 He claimed that the two
representatives from the Tieee and the AP lied about all the
news from Italy, including his expulsion.

There is some dispute over whether the Chicago Tribune
supported Seldes’ attempt to write the truth about Fascism.
Seldes claimed it did not. The paper did, however, report
the complaint from the other correspondents on July 28,
1925:

On Wednesday last a group of other American

correspondents in Rome, including representatives

of the New York Worle, Christi n Science Monitor,
ehicego Deily Neys, Ehiladelphia Public Ledger,

and the United Press signed a letter asking,...
for a conference...to protest against the
treatment of Mr. Seldes as unfair and high handed.
They said they purposed [sic] to request their
respective newspapers to withdraw them from Rome
if the Mussolini government persisted in its
action against The Teibuhe representative...The
only correspondents of American newspapers in Rome

62

who did not join in this protest were the
representatives of the Associated Press and the

hey_1eeh_Tieee, who are Italian subjects and not
American citizens.

The article acknowledged the censorship under which Seldes
and other correspondents were forced to operate and
indicated support for his protest at Italian censorship.
The article added:

He [Seldes] was sent to the Rome Bureau about six
months ago at his own request for a change.
Instead of sending out only the glowing reports of
conditions which are common from Rome since the
Mussolini dictatorship began, he sought to give
some publicity to the large minority of the
country, which continues boldly to persist and to
publish its opinions despite the energetic
censorship which prevails under the Mussolini
dictatorship.

The issue of Italian censorship was mentioned in

several articles including a satirical editorial in the July

29, 1925, hey Yeeh Woel :

Signor Grandi, Undersecretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, said there is no form of censorship; that
no newspaperman need fear to cable any facts, or
express any honestly professed opinion. This is
to say then, that Mr. Seldes is a liar and a
hypocrite. What the Italian Government wants, it
says in effect, is fair play: and its notion of
fair play is that if a correspondent cables that
Italy is full of sweetness and light, with a side
order of milk and honey, the correspondent is
permitted to dwell in Rome. Otherwise, alien
skies must smile upon him.

The N§H_XQIK_HQ£1Q also made it quite clear whose
side of the issue they supported and suggested that the
Italian government could damage its carefully cultivated
public image as a result of its actions:

The action of the Italian Government in asking the

63

withdrawal of George Seldes...is a brilliant piece
of stupidity. If, in view of the situation it
creates for the other correspondents, they do as
has been suggested and withdraw from Rome, the
government will be in worse plight [sic] than ever
so far as news sent to America is concerned. It
will be very simple for all of these
correspondents to "cover" Rome from some other
place, say Paris. There will be no dearth of
persons glad to furnish them with information.

But in such cases the Government will be unable to
present its side, as it can at present, which is a
valuable privilege when controversy is raging ...
When Seldes is accused of sending ‘misleading,
alarmist and exaggerated’ dispatches, this means
he sent facts which reflected not on Italy but on
an Administration, a group of men in control -
i.e., the Fascisti [sic]. That they may have been
true reports boots little to the Fascist mind.
That mind is addicted to strong arm methods, even
as regards foreign correspondents.

The most supportive of the dispatches was from the Netion:

We do not believe the charge - having followed the
work of Mr. Seldes (a brother of Gilbert Seldes)
for many years. But even if it were true it would
be no reason to expel him. Such high-handed
action can only lead outsiders to believe that
Italy is attempting to conceal something
shameful.12

The hew Toeh Daily News reported that what Seldes had
written about Italian censorship was not vastly different to
what others were saying about the Fascist Government,
adding:

The Teibune has no prejudice against fascism. It
knows the social and economic disorders and the
governmental weaknesses from which Premier
Mussolini rescued the land. In turn he
established a personal despotism and The Tribune
does not care for a news service which ignores the
real news, and furnishes government bulletins
about what is actually happening. Seldes

himself would not remain, nor have been permitted
to remain, as the agent of Premier Mussolini. The
purpose of corrupted and censored news from Italy
is to influence public opinion and to obtain in

64

international affairs benefits which would not be

had if public sentiment was based on truthful

information.17

This sample of newspaper articles, found among Seldes’
papers, indicate that there was support for Seldes’ actions
among the journalism community. The reports also indicate
that the international news services reported that press
censorship existed in Italy. Whether this was the only
occasion that Italian censorship was reported
internationally is not known.

Returning to Germany Seldes later wrote that he held no
grudge against Mussolini or Fascism for his expulsion. He
felt that, like his expulsion from Russia, it was
inevitable. It was a lesson, he wrote, that "all writers

who do not compromise and trim their sails soon learn if

they defy the dictators."18

SELDES’ CRITICISMS OF FASCISM

In Italy Seldes learned some important lessons about
Fascism that were to influence his criticisms of the press.
He saw Fascism as a reactionary ideology and he interpreted
it to mean anti-liberal, anti-freedom, anti-change and
intolerant of other political theories. He felt that it
posed a real threat to Democracy and, immediately after his
expulsion, he began to warn the world of its dangers.

Using the terms "Fascism" and "Reaction"

interchangeably, Seldes felt Fascism was as dangerous as

65

Communism, and in an article he wrote for Liberty magazine
in September 1925 he drew parallels between the two
ideologies. Both use violence and both claim to be a
panacea for all the world ills, he wrote. "Fascism is
Bolshevism working for another minority and wearing the
black instead of the red shirt." And instead of workers in
control it was big business.

The original Fascist party of Italy,... was

subsidized by a handful of the richest

industrialists and landowners who wanted to

preserve their wealth and power and prevent the

majority of people from living better lives.19
Seldes felt that there was no program or policy behind
Fascism: it was simply a ‘spoils system’ whose purpose was
to generate money for the rich by exploiting the poor.

Seldes found that Italian Fascism also meant profit for
overseas investors, as Mussolini mortgaged Italy to raise
funds for his new empire. By financing Mussolini, American
big business helped prop up a government that was destroying
democratic values. Further, big business also encouraged
the business-owned press to present positive images of
Fascism in order to promote further tourism and investment.
Both the national and international press was so successful
at promoting Italy that American companies owned half a
billion dollars worth of the country by 1931.‘20

According to Seldes, big businesses rationalized their

involvement with Italian Fascism by claiming that Mussolini

had saved Italy from Bolshevism. Since Communism was seen

66

as the greatest threat to world stability by many during the
19305 and 19405 this gave the association a cloak of
acceptable respectability. However, Seldes disputed that
Mussolini had saved Italy from Bolshevism. He claimed that
he had witnessed the rise of Democracy in post-war Italy
before it was destroyed by Fascism.21

Seldes, who was strongly anti-Communist, did not
believe that the existence of Fascism could be validated by
the fear of Communism. He increasingly began to believe
that it was Fascism, rather than Communism, that posed the
most immediate threat to Democratic society and liberal
values. He wrote: "The ultimate and complete destruction of
civil liberties is in the program of every reactionary and
Fascist group and movement. Liberty and Fascism cannot
coexist . "22 i

The Italian propaganda, about the success of Fascism,
deceived the world, according to Seldes. The illusion that
Fascism was a viable system of government was created by
Mussolini and the Fascists, who through censorship and the
threat of violence, controlled the news and deliberately
created the image of a Communist-free and prosperous Italy.

The only ones that could see the truth about Fascism -
the violence, the assault on freedom - were the foreign
correspondents, but there was nothing they could do against
such institutionalized government control. In fact, the

journalists in Italy were forced to become collaborators of

67

the Fascists because they had to assess each news item to
see if it was worth the risk of deportation. "Thus, we
voluntarily suppressed the truth about blackshirt terrorism
waiting for a big day."23

Even if the correspondent did get the story out of
Italy, Seldes claimed, he or she had to face a system of
international censorship, able to control and hide the truth
about Italy.“’ Seldes learned that the international news
services and newspaper chains suppressed any news that
reflected badly on Italy. He maintained that big-business-
run-newspapers were lying about Fascism for profit and that
"hundreds of press bureaus that supply the world’s news are
merely servants of the state and thus tools of

propaganda."25

He claimed that few papers were brave enough
to disregard the wishes of the foreign office or the
international business houses for fear of losing advertising
revenue. He insisted that: "Billions of dollars, at home
and abroad, are able to control or hide the international
truth . "26

Seldes’ theory of international press control, however,
is not easily reconciled with the reports of his expulsion,
which also mentioned that censorship existed in Italy.

The American press hid the truth, according to Seldes,
by writing favorably about Fascism, Naziism and Reaction,

and by calling everyone that was anti-Fascist and anti-

Reactionary a Communist.”' Seldes wrote that the newspapers

68

printed mostly the pro-Mussolini views of the business
people and politicians. Academics and labor leaders who
vowed "to drive Fascism from the face of the earth" did not
receive the same coverage.”

During his years in Europe Seldes grew concerned at the
spread of Fascism. He watched the increase in violence, the
reduction of personal liberties and the discrediting of
Democracy as a workable political ideology. He felt that
the 1929 economic collapse saw great gains for Fascism,
which "can arise only in time of national distress."29

In one country the bankers’ and manufacturers’

associations have assumed arbitrary power, in

another a perverted philosophy is in control of

human fate: in a third an ego maniac rules and in

a fourth medieval corruption has temporarily

crushed all liberal resistance; therefore the word

is spread throughout the dominant nations, America

and Britain, that democracy is unsuitable for most

of continental Europe, that it has proven a fraud

and a failure, that parliaments are a drag on the

efficient expression of the will of a people,

freedom is a modern delusion, truth is a false god

and liberty nothin§,but a chimaera [sic]. The new

propaganda reigns.

After watching the growth of Fascism in Europe, Seldes
was acutely conscious of any similar patterns in the United
States. In the 19305 and 19405 he wrote four books

documenting the threat of Fascism to America: Freedom of the
Beeee (1937), Tee eeh’t Do That (1938), Facts and Faseism
(1943) and epe Thoesahd Amerieahs (1947). He warned of the

danger of reaction which he believed would come from the
right wing and big business.

Seldes saw evidence of the growth in Reaction in

69

America’s social problems. He attributed the growing gap
between the rich and the poor, the vetoing of welfare bills
by Congress and anti-labor tone of the big-business-run-
newspapers to reactionary forces. He felt that groups like
the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the
American League and other "pseudo-patriotic" organizations
were behind the growth of American Fascism. He claimed that
these groups organized big business in a movement against
labor, encouraged the Liberty League to curtail civil
liberties and stopped the passage of food, drug and other
laws aimed to safeguard consumers. It was these powerful
business groups that sought to "end ... civil liberties,
destroy the labor unions, end the free press, and make money
at the expense of a slave nation."31

Seldes warned that big businesses was Fascist, but it
wasn’t until the Second World War, when businesses refused
to convert auto-plants to war production for fear of losing
profits, that the reactionary nature of business became
apparent:32 Seldes claimed that these manufacturers,
through their greed, sabotaged the American war effort and
others agreed with him. An editorial in The Nation related
how the Standard Oil company continued to sell gasoline to
the Germans and their subsidiaries throughout 1941 and only
ceased when black-listed by the state department}3 Michael
Straight of The hey Republie also attacked big business in

April 1942 when he described how Standard Oil withheld

7O
synthetic rubber production methods from the navy "to make
good on an agreement with I.G. Farben, the German chemical
trust . "3‘

It wasn’t just Seldes’ observations about the
unpatriotic and greedy nature of big business that drew
support. His accusation that big business and newspapers
were actively anti-labor and working against public welfare
were also supported by articles in The hetioh. Freda
Kirchwey argued that "war hysteria" would bring about
legislation undermining labor’s rights and in the end
"produce home grown Fascism."35 I. F. Stone also concluded
in an article entitled "All-Out Against Labor" that attacks
against labor were only an attempt to "distract attention
from the conduct of many big business men.”“ Another
exponent of the anti-labor tone of the press, Heywood Broun,
wrote in the guild Reporter on April 1, 1936: "the making of
a modern newspaper is Big Business. Big business does not
want to see the growth of trade unionism." Virginius
Dabney, editor of the hichmond Times Dispatch, was yet
another who agreed with Seldes that big-business-run
newspapers were not interested in the public’s welfare.
Dabney wrote to the Princeton Public Opinion Quarterly on
January 10, 1938: "What this country needs is a press which
puts the general good first. With notable exceptions,
American publishers are chiefly concerned with profit."

These are but a few who indicated support for Seldes’

71
accusations about big business and the press. It suggests
that, for all Seldes’ dramatic and aggressive talk about
international plots and censored press, there were others
who felt the same way.

For Seldes, America became divided into three political
groups. The Communists, the Fascists and the Liberals, and
he felt the struggle among these three ideologies was behind
many of the programs and reforms during the 19305 and 19405.
For example, Seldes believed that President F. D.
Roosevelt’s 1932 New Deal welfare programs were an attempt
to steer a path between Fascism and Communism.y' Seldes
also claimed that fear of Communism was used as an excuse by
a group of Wall Street bankers, who objected to Roosevelt’s
reform packages and planned to take control of the White
House and install a Fascist leader to control the
president . 38

Whether such a plot did exist is difficult to prove:
however, Seldes’ biggest concern about reaction in America
was that it would unite under a leader like Mussolini and
Hitler.

America’s danger from Fascism lies in the success

of a number of demogues [sic] who are arising in

all parts of the country. Like Hitler and

Mussolini and others, they make promises

capitalizing the misery of the unemployed, and

disclaim anything but patriotic and democratic

motives . 3°

Acknowledging that there was disillusionment with the

parliamentary process, Seldes continued to insist that

72
America had not gone to the left, Communism was not sweeping
the county, "its enemy is the black-shirted right, not the
red-shirted left."w

SUMMARY

Seldes’ experience in Italy had a fundamental impact on
his criticisms of the press. He believed that the world’s
news sources were corrupt. He also saw the growth of
Reaction in Europe after the First World War, but it was in
Italy that he saw the real threat that Fascism posed to
press freedom and liberal democratic values. He watched as
Fascism destroyed the free press, annihilated liberal values
and undermined personal freedoms. He watched as the
idealogy spread to Germany, Rumania, Spain and Japan
dragging the world toward another war with little protest
from democratic governments.

Seldes was against everything that Fascism stood for.
He objected to an idealogy based upon greed and violence, he
objected to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
few as big businesses manipulated governments for profit,
and he objected to the corruption of the world’s news
sources. Adopting these objections as the basis of his
criticisms, he continued to protest against Fascism and big
business.

Seldes’ experience in Italy took him another step

along the path toward becoming a press critic. In the seven

73
years since the First World War he had gone from adventurous
reporter to a protester of Italian Fascism. But it was not
until his meeting with psychoanalyst Dr. Alfred Adler that
he began to closely examine the direction in which he was

heading.

74

NOTES -- CHAPTER 4

1. George Seldes, Teu ean’t Eriht That (New York: Payson
and Clarke, 1929), 70.

2. Ibid., 69-70.

3. George Seldes, Witness to a Centurv (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 217.

4. Ibid.

5. George Seldes, Tell the Teeth and Run (New York:
Greenberg Publishers, 1953), 180.

6. Ibid., 179.

7. MW. 70-
8. MW. 218.
9. Tell the Teeth and gun, 189.

10. Ton Ceh’t Print That, 72.

11. Ibid., 78.
12. Associated Press Release, 28 July 1925. Special

Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.

13. theege_Teihepe, 29 July 1925.

14. hanchester Guareian, 1 August, 1925.

15. Witnees to a Centuey, 222-223.

16. 1e11_tbe_Trutb_and_Bsn. 194-

l7. The_fletieh, vol. 121, 1925.

18. New York Dail News, month unknown, 1925.

19. George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar (New York: Harper and
Brothers Publishers, 1935), xiv.

75

20. George Seldes, Eeete ape Tascise (New York: In Fact,
1943), 34.

21. Tee th’t Peiht That, 312.
22. Ibid., 87.

23. George Seldes, Toe Cah’t De Thet (New York: Modern Age
Books, 1938), 173.

24. Yen_§an1t_£rint_1bat. 80.
25. Ibid., 16.

26. George Seldes, Freedom of thetPreee (New York: Bobbs
Merrill, 1935),242.

27. Ibid.
28. Eeets ape Fascism, 69.
29. Tee th’t Eelht That, 96.

30. Tee ean’t Do That, 186.

31. Tee eah’t Print Thet, 10.
32. Eeete end Eeseise, 14.

33. Ibid., 12.

34. The Nation, 9 May 1942, 530.

35. I.F. Stone, "ESSO Family Reunion," The Nation, 12 June
1943, 826. and Michael Straight, "Standard Oil:Axis Ally,"

The hey Bepehlie, 6 April 1942, 450.

36. Freda Kirchwey, "Keep Cool on Labor," The Nation, 21
June 1941, 713.

37. I.F. Stone, "All-Out Against Labor," The Natio , 28
March 1942, 360.

38. George Seldes, Weele Eahoreme (New York: Blue Ribbon
Books, 1935), 382.

39. Tee eeh’t Do That, 174.

40. Herld_£anerama. 390.
41. Ibid., 396.

CHAPTER 5

DR. ALFRED ADLER

Not all the events that influenced Seldes’ writings
were as historically significant as his interview with
German General Paul Von Hindenburg or his expulsion from
Italy. Seldes’ meeting with psychoanalyst Dr. Alfred Adler
in Vienna in 1928 was not a particularly important news
event but it was a "catalytic" occasion for Seldes. He
wrote it was "much more significant for me at least than the
experiences of a certain Biblical character on the road to
Damascus."1 It was Seldes’ meeting with Adler that was to
precipitate a major change in Seldes’ career as he went from

journalist to press critic.

SELF ANALYSIS
After Seldes’ expulsion from Italy, he returned to
Berlin where he was head of the Teihepe bureau. He made I
several trips to Vienna in 1927 and during one of them he
met Dr. Alfred Adler, founder of the school of individual
psychology and the inferiority complex theory. Seldes
initially asked Adler for a personality analysis of

Mussolini for a feature story he was writing for the New

76

77
N W W .

Following this meeting, when ever Seldes was in Vienna,
he would attend weekly receptions at Adler’s house. Through
these informal sessions Seldes, at 37, began to examine his
own life, his relationship with his family and his decision
to become a journalist. Until this point Seldes’ life had
been so full of exciting events and historic encounters that
he never stopped to fully consider the implications of how
he was living.

Seldes acknowledged the importance of his meeting with
Adler when he wrote that it shaped the pattern of his life
as much as "my libertarian, nonconformist freethinking
father did in my childhood."2

Dr. Adler changed my attitude and my career just

as surely as certain forces shape the lives, the

behavior patterns, of all the people in the world

in their childhood.3
Adler, with his theories about human behavior, helped Seldes
to analyze his life.

When he [Adler] first spoke of "the feeling of

inferiority," which he insisted every man and

woman living and dead had experienced, and the

lifelong struggle everyone makes to overcome it,

how this feeling expresses itself, the

compensations for it...he gave me a true

revelation and set me to reconsidering,

meditating, judging and deciding upon the future.4

Seldes superficially acknowledged in his books that
Adler made him think about his life, but Seldes does not

reveal what motivated him initially to undertake this

reassessment. It is possible to speculate that Seldes was

78
open to self examination partially to resolve the personal
conflict he experienced trying to reconcile his beliefs
about how the press should function with the lies he saw in
the international news. He had been a journalist for twenty
years when he met Adler, and his self-examination may also
have been part of a general disillusionment with the
profession. Whatever the reason it is clear that Dr. Adler
provided Seldes with some powerful insights into what had
influenced his choices in life.

Adler emphasized that the pattern of human behavior was
set in the earliest years of life. Seldes acknowledged the
significant influences on his own life.

My mother whom I do not remember, my aunt who

guided my life for ten years, and my father who

came and went - these are the three who according

to my mentor Alfred Adler are so greatly

responsible for much that I have done and said and

the way I have gone through my four decades of

American and European journalism.

Seldes examined his motives for becoming a journalist.
He considered himself shy and fearful, reticent and
retiring. "No aspen leaf ever had a shakier time than I
during my hour with Mussolini and every big event to which I
have been assigned in the past 10 years in Europe filled me
*with dread and horror."6 Seldes also claimed that he hated
to push himself forward and was self-deprecating about his
achievements.

I hated the first person singular and avoided it

always in my newspaper work...Despite Hemingway

writing that ‘I knew George and he was a damn fine
newspaper man,’ that wasn’t so. There were amazing

79

coincidences and the "great scoops" were
accidents.7

At a time when journalists were essentially roaring,
brawling adventurers Seldes wondered why he had chosen this
profession, and Adler provided him with an explanation.

I had been a timid child, fearful of adventures.

Adler told us that youth meets the feeling of

inferiority in many ways -one person might become

a bully, seeking compensation in fighting: and

another would become a humanitarian.8

It is possible that Seldes chose to become a journalist
because he saw it as a profession that was both glamorous
and fun, as well as a social service.

The underlying impetus for Seldes to become a
journalist and later a press critic may have come from his
struggle to live up to his father’s liberal, utopian
idealized views of life. Seldes never admits this but
through his oblique intellectualized references it is
possible to speculate that he felt simply being George
Seldes was not enough to satisfy his father. Seldes
believed he had to achieve great things in order to be
loved. He wrote: "I was especially interested in the
Adlerian view of compensating for the universal feeling of
inferiority. I realized that my choice of trade had been
explained by Dr. Adler." He added

Was there also compulsion those past decades for

speaking and writing, not out of partisanship, but

out of a feeling of simple justice for the small,

the weak, the minority, the voiceless, the

disinherited? Were these compulsions developing

out of the old behavior pattern inflexibly set
during the years of childhood, shaped by my

80

parents?9

SUMMARY

The Wednesday afternoons at Adler’s apartment were
important to Seldes’ evolution as a critic. He began to
think about his career and to focus on why he became a
reporter. In the process of self discovery he changed from
a foreign news reporter to a press critic. Seldes
acknowledged openly that Adler helped him to look closely at
why he became a journalist and what "made me want to quit
newspaper work and attempt writing of more lasting value
than headline news."10

I decided that I too would overcome my feeling of

inferiority, give up security, give up the life of

travel and adventures and dramatic experiences,

leave an interesting and exciting world, and

follow my second, but never exercised ambition,

playwriting.11

It was not the first time Seldes had thought of leaving
journalism. He mentioned it in a letter he wrote to Judith
Radorf on September 22, 1926. He described his time in
Syria and Damascus and wrote of his plans for the future.
"Now going to Berlin - bloody Berlin - my fatality - always
to be sent back there, I count on it as cash, I cannot
quit."

Seldes’ brother Gilbert also mentioned Seldes’ desire
to leave the business in an article he wrote for the hey

Tork Eyehihg Eost on February 13, 1929. "He is a great

newspaperman...but like the star reporter on the front page,

81
George has been giving up newspaper work for years and
getting pulled back into it."

Meeting Adler was unlike any of Seldes other
experiences, because it did not directly provide him with
material for criticisms of the press. However, it was
important in a more personal way. It enabled him to look at
his other experiences in a different perspective and gave
him the insight to translate them into criticisms of how the
press functioned.

Seldes didn’t leave journalism until almost two years
after meeting Adler. It took one more experience before he
made the final decision to leave newspaper journalism for

good.

82

NOTES -- CHAPTER 5

1- George Seldes, W (New York:
Greenburg Publishers, 1953), ix.

2. George Seldes, Withese te a Cehteey (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 227.

3. Tell the Teeth and gun, viii.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., xxiii - xxiv

6. Ih§_N§!;XQIk_Qh§§I!§£. 12 June, 1929.
7- 1211_LDQ;TIULD_QEQ_BEQ. x.

8. Witneee to a Century, 228.

9. Tell the Truth and Run, xi.

10. Withees te e genteey, 228.

11. Tell the Teeth and Rep, 225.

CHAPTER 6

MEXICO

If Seldes’ meeting with Dr. Adler caused him to think
about his future, then it was his experience in Mexico that
led him to act upon those reflections and make the decision
to leave the newspaper business. It was in Mexico that
Seldes’ illusions about the American press were shattered
when he discovered that the United States’ press was just as

corrupt as the press in Europe.

SABOTAGE BY THE UNITED STATES PRESS

Seldes returned to the United States early in 1927 to
recuperate from malaria, which he contracted while on
assignment in Baghdad. In March Colonel McCormick called
him about rumors that the United States was about to declare
war on Mexico and said the Tribuhe needed a trained foreign
correspondent to cover the situation. Seldes, who was
almost recovered, accepted the assignment.

Going to Mexico as "open minded a journalist that ever
visited a strange land," Seldes found the border deluged
with propaganda, rumors of a Bolshevik takeover, and

1

Mexicans in the pay of Americans. He learned that war was

83

84

not imminent but rather that there was tremendous intrigue
by Americans and the Mexican aristocracy to discredit the
Mexican Socialist government. Several American oil and
mining companies, through the press, promoted a picture of
internal disharmony in Mexico in order to encourage the U.S.
government to intervene on the pretext of stabilizing the
region. The businesses hoped that intervention would lead
to the negotiation of further mining concessions.2

The center of the anti-Mexican intrigue was the
American Embassy in Mexico City. Seldes again saw the U.S.
embassy acting as the political agents of big business
interests and he claimed that it had deliberately fostered
fears of Bolshevism. Seldes found that much of the anti-
Mexican sentiment focused upon Mexican President Pluarco
Elias Calles, who had threatened to withdraw American mining
concessions. Calles claimed to have documents that proved
the original concessions had been extracted through threats
of violence.3

In an effort to understand the situation, Seldes
carried out his own investigations. He began first by
examining the accusations against Calles.

Seldes discovered that the Mexican president, although
profoundly impressed by Communist ideas, was more Socialist
than Bolshevik. Calles was attempting to restore land and
mining rights to the Mexican people and establish a

dictatorship of the workers. The nucleus of the

85
dictatorship was the Mexican Federation of Labor (CROM),
whose program was the socialization of all means of
production and distribution. Seldes learned that CROM,
despite its professed Communist goal, had agreed to fight
Bolshevism in cooperation with the American Federation of
Labor.

Seldes conceded that Calles was fanatical in some
areas, particularly in his attacks of the Catholic Church,
which he blamed for dividing the Mexican people. Seldes
found that the Catholic church in Mexico was politically
active and was able to incite sections of the population
into revolt against the government. Yet the American press
downplayed the political nature of the church and focused
upon only the government attacks on the Catholic Church.
Seldes found this bias played upon Catholic sentiment in the
United States and further discredited the Mexican
government.

Seldes found many reporters in Mexico ready to work
against the Calles regime by fabricating lies about
Bolshevik plots. It was a shocking discovery for Seldes
because, although he knew publishers censored the news, he
had believed that journalists in the field tried to write
the truth.

Mexico was an experience which hit me hard. It

was the first time, I might add the only time, I

found a large percentage of the American press

corps engage in the same unethical or venal

practices which were common to newspaper owners,
but rare among reporters. No one could ever

86

accuse any one of a score of us who had been in

Moscow of attacking or favoring the Bolshevik

regime because of a promised oil concession or the

failure to get it ... In Mexico there was

corruption among the correspondents.‘

Seldes felt that the anti-Mexican attitude of the
reporters only reflected the views of their big business
newspapers in America.

To begin with there are powerful newspapers in

America, which want war with an annexation or

occupation of Mexico, and these papers pick men

[reporters] who believe in this policy or who sell

themselves to it.5
The newspapers of America were content to have events in
Mexico interpreted by incompetent and prejudiced reporters,
according to Seldes. He claimed that ninety percent of the
reports from Mexico were biased and depicted only the darker

5 Seldes concluded that "Between

side of the Calles regime.
the American editors and the American reporters Mexico has
not had a square deal."7

Despite the lies in the American press Seldes was not
blind to the inadequacies of the Mexican president. He
criticized Calles’ efforts to control his opponents by
censoring the Mexican press. Yet Seldes, who objected to
censorship in any form, found that Mexican censorship was
virtually insignificant compared to America’s manipulation
of the news about Mexico. He wrote:

... censorship exists [in Mexico] from time to

time, but ... it is not a tenth as stupid or

vicious as that practiced in American newspaper

offices where owners and editors have policies of

war and interventions which force their editorial
writers and reporters to prostitute themselves.8

87

From his own investigations in Mexico Seldes concluded
that there were Bolsheviks in Mexico trying to incite the
country against the Americans. However, he felt that there
was no real Communist threat because Mexico simply preferred
America to Russia. He wrote about his findings in several
articles for the Tribune but found that for the first time
in ten years his copy was censored.

Seldes’ findings were a drop in the ocean of
disinformation that was being fed to the press by the
embassy, which kept the fear of Bolshevism at a fever pitch.
The American ambassador (unnamed) was opposed to any change
in the status quo and labelled anything that deviated from
previously accepted methods as being Bolshevism. When
Calles spoke of ideals in government the ambassador could
only see violations in property rights, and when Calles
explained his reforms it was considered Communist.9 The
intense anti-Mexican sentiment among Americans in Mexico led
to collusion between the press and the embassy, who both,
because of their desire to promote commercial investment,
had a vested interest in discrediting the Calles’
government. Seldes was offered stolen documents by one of
his pro-American Mexican sources that alleged that the
Calles’ government would financially renumerate any U.S.
senator for expressing sympathy for Mexico. The documents
were being sold to reporters, according to Seldes, with the

tacit approval of the diplomatic corp. Seldes felt the

88
documents were false and didn’t buy them, but this didn’t
stop the Hearst syndicate from purchasing and publishing
them. Subsequent Congressional records later declared the
papers forgeries.

Instead of finding that Mexico was corrupt, Seldes
uncovered incriminating evidence that the U.S. government
had been intervening in Mexican affairs for several years.
He discovered several authentic documents that proved the
U.S. Embassy in Mexico City was implicated in the 1913
assassination of the Mexican president, Francisco Madero.
Seldes believed that the Madero affair was important to the
strained relations between the two countries. He reported
that Calles had said, fourteen years after the
assassination, that "complete confidence between Mexico and
the United States can never be re-established until
[the]...affair is explained and atoned for to the
satisfaction of our people."10 Seldes sent the Madero
documents to the Chicago Teihune, but the story was never
published.

Seldes found it especially intolerable that a number of»
his Mexico stories were censored after having spent nine
years in Europe where, because of Colonel McCormick’s lack
of interest in European affairs, no office policy had
influenced his stories.

In Europe, thanks no doubt to the fact that

America is still uninvolved in Transatlantic

politics, the newspaperman is almost entirely free
from editorial political instructions. In my nine

89

years [sic] with the ehicego Teibene, for example,
I never received an order from Colonel McCormick
to support or attack any party, system or cause.11
It was the complete reverse in Mexico. Seldes

discovered that the thieege_Teihehe supported intervention
in Mexico and his copy was changed accordingly.12 He
described Mexico as one of his most "upsetting experiences"
in which he discovered the truth about the press. His
education began with:

... my first American assignment (in 1927) after

eleven years [sic] of foreign service during which

I had been free to write as I pleased. Now,

censored and suppressed by the rich and powerful

Chicago Tribune,...I wanted to leave the

profession, or trade, of daily journalism, anger

and disillusion now forcing a decision.

After being in Mexico only three months Seldes returned
to the States and reported to the secretary of state: "I
believe both the press and political agencies of America
unfair in their general attitude to Calles and Mexico."“
He noted that America was misinformed on the situation in
Mexico, and he detailed both the anti-Mexican sentiment that
existed among the Americans, the plans for a labor
dictatorship and the trouble with the Catholic Church. He
concluded his report by saying:

My personal opinion is this: I believe that the
United States government should support the
present regime in Mexico. Calles is a fanatic,
but there are other men...who want to save Mexico
from continuation in the 400 years of ignorance,
slavery and terrorism. If we change our attitude
to friendship, instead of ambassadorial hatred, we
can do more than by intervention...They would
repeal the confiscation oil laws, compromise with
the church and live at peace with us of we showed

90

the least indication of wanting friendship instead
of military intervention.15

Immediately after Seldes left Mexico he wrote 20
articles on the situation for his paper presenting both
sides of the issue. He submitted the columns to the Tribune
before being transferred back to Europe. A few months later
he discovered that only five columns, presenting the United
States side, were published. He was informed that the rest
of the articles were not of interest to the public.

This was total censorship and suppression. It had
never happened to me in the more than eight [sic]
Tribehe years. The reason was obvious: the
xenophobic Colonel hated Europe so much that he
did not care what our corps sent as news every
day. With Mexico it was different. I then and
there decided to quit the Tribune as soon as
financially possible.16

Idealistically, Seldes chose to leave the ehicage
Tribune because he felt it did not honestly report the news.
He resigned on December 31, 1928.

One could perhaps understand all and forgive all -
except the corruption of the news. On a newspaper
this was the cardinal sin, the sin that nullified
the reason for its existence, which made its
existence not only an evil but a growing and
spreading evil whose field was unbounded. It had
not yet spread to Europe. But could I continue
there to do my work in the sure knowledge that
sooner or later, and probably quite soon, the
daily orders on what to write, would be coming to
Europe from the Duke of Chicago.17

After years of observing press censorship in Europe,
the experience in Mexico changed Seldes from a reporter,
seduced by the fun and glamor of the profession, to a

journalist prepared to resign because the press lied. Was

91
this decision to resign prompted solely by the discovery
that the American press had lied to the public? It was
probably a combination of reasons, but lying in the press
was undoubtedly a key issue and indicates the seriousness
which Seldes had come to view the issue of press censorship.
However, the decision may have been part of a mid-life
crisis, which was also characterized by his three week
courtship and marriage to Helen Larkin and the purchase of
his first home. In addition, the financial considerations
that he listed in earlier letters as reasons for not leaving
the profession were taken care of by a book offer from his

brother’s publisher.

SUMMARY

Seldes’ experience in Mexico appears to have been the
deciding factor in his decision to leave the newspaper
business. In many respects Mexico was the culmination of
nine years of censorship for Seldes, and the final
disillusionment. Throughout his years in Europe, Seldes had
witnessed press corruption by the Communist and Fascist
governments, but he had always believed that the American
press, as a whole, was above such corruption. He recognized
that some foreign news had not been reported in the U.S.,
but he felt that was largely the fault of the European

governments, rather than a deliberate plan by the American

92
press. His time in Mexico taught him otherwise. He learned
that American businesses were manipulating international
politics in Mexico for profit and that the press of America
was facilitating this corruption by printing anti-Mexican
lies in the daily papers. He discovered that the press in
America was just as corrupt as the press in Europe. Seldes
did not see Mexico the same way as many of his colleagues
did, and he did not join in with the lying about the true
state of affairs. This is possibly because first he had
been abroad for several years and had developed an impartial
eye, and second he was still committed to the concept that
the press should be free from business interests.

In 1928 Seldes was offered a contract by the
publishers Payson and Clarke to write a book about foreign
correspondents. He accepted the offer and left daily
newspaper journalism for ever. He began to write about his
experiences as a correspondent, and about the censorship of
the news that he had witnessed in Europe, Mexico and
America. He books repeated the same accusations and related
the same events until the Spanish Civil War, which forced

him re-examine his view of the press once again.

1.

93

NOTES -- CHAPTER 6

George Seldes, Toe eeh’t Eeiht That (New York:

and Clarke Ltd., 1929), 315.

2.

George Seldes, Witness to a Century (New York:

Ballantine Books, 1987), 283.

George Seldes, Tell the Truth and Bun (New York:
Greenburg Publisher, 1953), 213.

3.

4.

5.

6.

10.

11.

12.

14.

15.

16.

17.

Ibid., 218.

Tou een’t Beint That, 349.

Tell the Teeth and Run, 218.
You Can’t Print That, 349.

Ibid., 18

Ibid., 350.

Ibid., 352.

Ibid., 348.

Ibid., 323.

Tou Can’t go That, 387.
You th’t Erint That,391.
Witness to a Centuey, 242.

Tell the Teuth and Run, 221-222.

Payson

CHAPTER 7

SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Seldes spent the years following his retirement from
the newspaper profession writing books. He wrote ten books
in ten years and all were based on his experiences as a
foreign correspondent. Through his writings he cemented the
foundations of his criticisms. His primary attacks were
focused on the mainstream press and its failure to inform
the public. He criticized the press for lying to the public
and for censoring the news in accordance with political or
business office policies. He also attacked big businesses’
control over newspaper content.

Seldes saw many examples of press corruption during
the 19305. Probably the most influential event, which
reaffirmed his views of inadequate coverage, was the

reporting of the Spanish Civil war.

SELDES’ COVERAGE OF SPAIN
Spain was declared a democratic republic in 1931.
Wealth and power were taken away from the controlling class

through land reforms and given to the people. The situation

94

95
the government. However, victory of the Popular Front Party
in 1936 saw another reversal, with ten times the amount of
land redistributed to the people. Later that same year
military leader Francisco Franco sought the assistance of
Fascist governments in Germany and Italy to help restore
land to the wealthy in Spain. Thus began the Spanish Civil
War.

Technically it was a battle between the Nationalists —
the military and the aristocracy - and the Republicans - the
middle classes and the workers - of Spain, but to many it
was so much more. The war became a metaphor for the world’s
struggle over Fascist, Communist and Democratic ideologies
and it stirred romantics, idealists and liberals across the
world. It also touched Seldes deeply. He wrote that he
had a strong compulsion to go to Spain.

Helen and I read the news and talked and thought

about it. We both felt now that this was more

than a war: we felt that it was a conflict of

ideas involving the world, and that we too, like

all other people, were involved in it, although

our country was neutral. At the beginning,

remembering the lessons of the (First) World War,

my devotion to the cause of the Allies, my

disillusion at the time the Page cable was made

public ... I acted cautiously. But by the end of

the year the Spanish war had become, I thought, an

attack not only on people but on culture and on

civilization, and it was made by all the forces of
reaction in the world, a reaction which aimed to

go back to feudal times, if not to barbarism.1

The civil war divided world opinion. Seldes, along
with many other writers and intellectuals, claimed the

Republic stood for Democracy, freedom and the rights of

96
workers. And that it was battling against Fascist-backed
aristocrats.

Fascism was attacking in Spain - it was fighting

not Communism as the Fascists of all lands, and

notably the pro-fascists in the U.S. and the

great Vatican propaganda machine was claiming, but

it was fighting democracy.[sic]2
The mainstream press in America, however, portrayed the
Nationalists as the rightful government, while playing up
rumors that the Republicans were Communist-backed
insurgents.

Seldes, who covered the war for the hey_Teeh_£eet - one
of the few papers he felt was liberal - denied that there
was any military Communist presence in Spain. He wrote in a
mail dispatch:

So far as the Russians are concerned, it is true,

as I have previously reported, that they sent over

a few men in the early days of the war, these men

being mostly aviators and all volunteers...Russia

has not sent units or divisions nor has it

deliberately sent units for war experience, as

Germany has done.3
Communist involvement in the Spanish Civil War was minimal,
according to Seldes, who wrote, "All of us knew that the
Communists had little say or power in 1936-37."‘ It was
this belief that led Seldes to maintain in his dispatches
and in his later books that the Communist myth was created
by the Fascists to prevent aid to the Republic.5

Myth or not, fear of Bolshevism kept international

support from the Republic. Fascism was still seen as

preferable to Communism and with the outbreak of the Spanish

97
Civil War Britain attempted to maintain a balance of power
in Europe and proposed a neutrality pact toward Spain. It
was accepted by all western nations, including the United
States. Seldes wrote that all the democracies knew that
Hitler and Mussolini were supplying Franco with military
weapons, but the neutrality pact prevented the allies from
sending, food, medicine or military aid to Spain to help the
Republic.

Seldes couldn’t understand how the Democratic nations
of the world could stand by while the Spanish Republic was
destroyed by Fascism. Many years later he wrote:

How was it possible, given a free press in the

free nations such as the United States, Britain

and France, and a pro-democratic people in at

least half the world, that one small free and

democratic country, the Spanish Republic, could be

abandoned by its alleged friends and destroyed by

its fascist enemies?‘

Seldes and his wife went to Spain in 1936 and spent six
months talking to people of all political persuasions trying
to understand what was really happening. "I had never
before spoken to so many people, and everyday, as I did in
Spain, asking every peasant, every soldier...what it was all
about."7

Seldes wrote a series of 24 articles on the war and
concluded that the conflict was essentially a class war.

On the government side [the Republic] there is the

objective of the redistribution of land and

wealth. There is no desire to take life or to

eliminate its enemies. On the Fascist side in

this class war there is not only a frank desire to
conserve land and wealth for the so-called "200

98

families" which own most of Spain, but a plan to

eliminate what it terms Marxism, forever. Hitler

and Goering are the spiritual fathers of this plan

of elimination.8

Spain showed Seldes that labor was on the march. He
saw the masses rising up take control of their own destiny,
demanding not just improved working conditions but also
wanting a say in governing themselves. "After a hundred
years of the industrial revolution and decades of banners
saying ‘Labor is on the march,’ labor was on the march, and
at last it was intelligent."9

Seldes’ visit to Spain confirmed that the mainstream
press in America was lying about the war. He disputed
reports in the U.S. daily papers that the Republic committed
atrocities against prisoners. He claimed that the atrocities
were committed by the Fascists and wrote in another
dispatch: "It is not true that the government [Republic]
kills prisoners. My wife and I have visited the prisons
full of them." He added that it was Franco and the Fascists
that took no prisoners.

Hypothesizing about the connection between the Fascists
and Franco, Seldes speculated about the cost of Hitler and
Mussolini’s assistance to Franco for fighting the civil war.
Germany and Italy sent in their bills to Franco for the use
of men and equipment, demanding payment in iron ore, copper
and oil. "It is the boldest attempt in the history of

nations, which have no money, to get, without cash payment,

the materials of which their hypertrophied war machines are

99

built and must be maintained until the day of action."
Seldes concluded, ”The mineral wealth of rich Spain is
filling the ships of the impoverished dictatorships."

Germany and Italy used the Spanish Civil War as a
dress-rehearsal for the Second World War, according to
Seldes. He wrote in an April 21, 1937, mail dispatch:

The one outstanding conclusion, which military and

diplomatic observers draw, is that the great

Second World War must be postponed by Mussolini

and Hitler. The lessons they have already learned

requires [sic] more than a year to translate into

new guns and airplanes, tanks and bombs. Two year

postponement of the world war is the usual

estimate.

Seldes believed Hitler and Mussolini’s involvement in
the Spanish War showed that Fascism was spreading.

It was now obviously fascism moving to

conquer...with tanks and guns and airplanes

camouflaged behind a cast confusing international

curtain of propaganda, accusing a democracy of

being a communist regime.1O

Seldes left Spain in 1937 totally committed to the

Spanish Republic. He declared openly, "I am not neutral. I
am for the Popular Front, the democratic Republic. I feel
that no decent, intelligent, honest American can remain

neutral."11

Seldes believed that the struggling democratic
Republic of Spain was being sacrificed to international big
business Fascists who promised profits and political
advantage to those who supported them. Seldes cited the
Catholic Church’s official support of Fascism as an example

of this bargain.

The Catholic Church, who was an ally of the Fascists,

100
played a critical role in discouraging the U.S. government
from sending assistance to the Republicans. Seldes
maintained that the Catholic Church brought pressure to bear
on Italians in America, who in turn had pressured the press
and the government to withhold support for the Republic.
According to Seldes the Catholic Church supported the
Nationalists in Spain because Mussolini had reached an
agreement with the Pope in Rome, which exchanged Fascist
support for protection of papal lands and property.
Further, in Spain many of the most powerful clergy in the
Catholic Church came from the aristocracy, that ensured
their support for the Nationalists. Yet, Seldes found this
support largely "official" and representative of only the
Roman clergy. Seldes cited Gallup Poll figures that
indicated that only 38 percent of America’s 22 million
Catholics favored Franco.12 Seldes returned from
Spain and vowed to continue the battle "I returned home
determined to give our time...to helping the Loyalists."”
He discovered America overflowing with sensational and false
news about the war. He wrote that Helen and he "both felt
that we had to tell the people of America this was our war.
We were compelled, we felt driven, into some decision. We
had to quit the peaceful hill and valley, and do what we
could."“ The Seldeses sold everything and moved from
Vermont to New York to fight the battle for a Spanish

democracy. They joined dozens of pro-Republican anti-

101
Fascist organizations, including the League of American
Writers, which actively fought Fascism and Reaction.

While in Spain Seldes had seen how badly equipped the
Republicans were and how few men they had, and he wrote that
he knew that Spain would lose the war "within my first five
minutes in trenches near Madrid."15 Yet Seldes continued
to write hopefully about the Loyalists for the next three
years. He felt compelled to fight for the Republican cause.
All the forces against Fascism were united in the Spanish
Republic and Seldes wrote: "Spain had restored our faith in
human beings, We could again say, and with passion: The

People, Yes.”“

SELDES’ CRITICISMS OF THE CIVIL WAR PRESS COVERAGE

Seldes’ major criticism of the press coverage of the
civil war was that the mainstream press lied about the
conflict. He maintained that the free press published the
greatest series of falsehoods in modern history about Spain.
He wrote that the mainstream press distorted the truth about
Spain and incited public feeling against the Republic.
"Spain proved...the world press is allied to all other
commercial and political commercial interests on the
conservative, if not the reactionary side."17

The press lords, according to Seldes, had decided it
was preferable to have a Fascist government in Spain than a

Communist and so lied about what was going on in Spain.

102

Hearst Sr.,... gave orders that the Spanish

Republic was to be denounced editorially and

always referred to as "reds" whereas the traitor

generals and their forces, supplied by Mussolini

and Hitler, were to be called "Nationalists."w
Through semantics like these the business-run-press was able
to play upon the public’s fear of Communism, and newspapers
were able to incite support for the Nationalists. No one
would believe the war correspondents who reported that there
were only a few hundred Russians and not one of them was a
soldier. "Without one exception every correspondent in
Madrid informed the world that Hitler and Mussolini were
trying out infantry, tanks...and other weapons for the
imminent world war, but no one listened."19

Seldes found that the only ones prepared to print the
truth were the liberal papers because they were not as
controlled by advertising dollars and big business as the
daily papers. Yet, many of these, Seldes claimed, were
eventually intimidated or blackmailed by their advertisers
into modifying their reports. Seldes wrote that even the hey
Teeh_£eet was forced to change its pro-Republican stance
after a boycott of the paper was called for by Cardinal
Daugherty of Philadelphia.

According to Seldes, deliberate misinformation about
Spain poured in from everywhere, including the U.S. Foreign
Office. Seldes claimed that America’s foreign policy toward

Spain was dictated by U.S. business interests. Businesses

which dealt with Italy and Germany did not want to adversely

103
affect their interests by interfering in Spain.

Seldes saw evidence of Foreign Office misinformation
when he reported on the Spanish War to American Ambassador
Bill Bullitt. Bullitt had gained a reputation as a Fascist
sympathizer, and Seldes withheld information that would hurt
the Republic:

I did not...tell Bullitt that the Republic had

almost no machine guns, rifles or cannons behind

the trenches, little ammunition, almost no

medicine, almost no food. I did mention the

foreigners, the whole Italian armies in Spain, and

Hitler’s tanks and his Condor Legion of thousands

of aviators, and I added that despite what the

papers in foreign countries said, there were no

Russian troops in Spain.20

Bullitt disagreed with Seldes’ report. The Ambassador
insisted that his sources had indicated that there were
Russians in Spain and continued to inform the government
accordingly.

In spite of the international misinformation and
falsification of the news from Spain, the Republic gained
support from all over the world. Press opinion against
Spain was not a true expression of the public’s sympathy,
wrote Seldes. "Every intelligent person in the world who
knew what was happening ... favored the Spanish Republic."21
Volunteers from throughout Europe flooded Spain eager to
fight against Fascism, and writers and intellectuals from
around the world wrote about the injustices of the civil

war. Writer Malcolm Muggeridge observed that the Spanish

War provoked such support because it was the last occasion

104
when people were confronted with a clear choice between good
and evil .22
The war taught Seldes about the greatness of common
people and gave him faith that humankind could be actively
involved in their own government. In Thoreau-ian overtones
he wrote of the nobility of the futile fight against

fascism;

Not a few great common men, not a few heroes, but
mass greatness, a nobility of the human spirit
among the many which in history is usually
accredited to individuals, a few heroic ones, a
national hero: and sometimes to a little group,
but never to multitudes. Here, once in my
lifetime, in a time of greatness I saw the
thousands, tens of thousands of illiterate
peasants and factory workers, American trade union
organizers from Detroit, British poets, and Jews
from Dachau who had been little merchants,
doctors, professors and students but mostly the
common ordinary run of working men with rifles in
their hands...many men who might have gone to
their graves without thinking, without ever
feeling deeply, many lifted out of the useless
ruts of their lives, up to the level of the time,
the time of greatness. This was mass heroism. It
was a rare if not unique experience.

While giving Seldes hope for humanity, Spain also broke
his heart. Writer Albert Camus explained it best when he
said: "It was in Spain that man learned that one can be
right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit,
that there are times when courage is not its own
recompense . "2”

Seldes’ experience in Spain was important for several
reasons: First, it turned him from a pacifist into a

fighter. "I was a pacifist until 1936: from Spain in 1937 I

105

wrote: there is only one war worth fighting, one cause worth
sacrificing one’s life for, and that is the war against
Fascism."5' Second, Spain changed Seldes’ view on
Communism. After his expulsion from Russia in 1923 he
became a ferocious opponent of Communism. However, during
the 19305 and 19405 he came to believe that Fascism was a
greater threat than Communism. After seeing the Communist
support for the Republic Seldes became more tolerant of the
Marxist idealogy. He never became a Communist because he
was ideologically opposed to a one-party system, but he did
join a number of anti-Fascist, pro-Spanish Republican
organizations that tolerated or encouraged Communist
membership. Helen, however, was a member of the Communist
party from 1940 through to 1944.26

Seldes collaborated with the Communists because they
were the only group prepared to stand against Fascism. Yet,
both Seldes and the Spanish Republic suffered as a result of
their affiliation with the left. Seldes claimed that
Fascist American newspapers used the Republic’s link with
Communism to harass the Spanish Republic to death. He
wrote: To hear American tourists in France saying, "Franco
will make short work of those dirty Reds...and repeating
every lie of the reactionary press...is indeed a sickening

experience . "27

Seldes learned in Spain "that anything, a
nation as well as a person, can be maimed if not destroyed

by false red-baiting. This was the greatest lesson from

106

Spain. "28

Seldes learned this lesson well. He was, himself, the
target of red-baiting throughout the 19405 and 19505. J.
Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations
(FBI), kept a file on Seldes and kept him and Helen under
surveillance, monitoring their movements and interfering
with their mail.”’ Seldes’ persecution climaxed with his
appearance before Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Committee
on Un-American Activity in 1953. He was anti-establishment
and during these reactionary years that was sufficient
reason to be labeled "red."

Seldes was cleared by McCarthy but the harassment he
experienced may have caused him to re-examine his position
on Communist support for the Republic. He never stopped
believing in the Republican cause and what he believed was a
fight for freedom and Democracy, but seems to have come to a
realization that the Communists played a larger role in the
war than he had previously suspected. He wrote a letter to
a friend called "Tim W," in December 1957:

In 1936 and 1937 I was in Spain...and I was
completely taken in by the Moscow program of
complete disinterested, united front help for the
Republic. The only group that appeared completely
committed to the Spanish Republic were the
communists...At least that’s how it looked to us.
Perhaps we were blinded by the light - others,
notably those who had no political perceptions,
and most notably Ernest Hemingway, saw and heard
disquieting and disillusioning things...but we

refused to believe them.“’

Seldes wrote that the Communists admitted that they plotted

107
to take over Spain from the beginning of the civil war and
at no time was their declaration of support real.

I believe that in modern times there was never

more enthusiasm, even fanaticism, aroused for a

noble cause among so many common people in the

whole world as in the case of the Spanish Loyalist

Republic, and this cause was betrayed by the

Moscow Regimec"1

Seldes came to believe that it was impossible to
compromise with Communists, regardless of the cause and he
wrote:

It is impossible to go along any distance at all

with either Communists or Fascists today - it was

impossible years ago, only the majority of left-
liberals did not realize it.

From these letters it is possible to see a change in
Seldes. He was no longer the same man who, in 1936, had his
faith in human nature reaffirmed by the battle against
Fascism in Spain. In the intervening years he discovered
that the glorious battle for freedom and democracy had been
tarnished by the presence of Soviet Communists. In these
later letters it also seemed that Seldes’ faith in people
had also been tarnished.

There is no hope for any radical or even a deeply

rooted liberal movement in America so long as the

vast majority, the working people...remain

abysmally illiterate - economically and

politically speaking.

Seldes continued to believe in the Loyalist cause,
which he interpreted as a battle for freedom and liberty,

but he no longer thought that the Communists were altruistic

helpers as he had initially believed.

108

SUMMARY

The Spanish Civil War was important for Seldes for two
reasons. First of all it gave him hope, hope in people and
their ability to be actively involved in their own
government. He came to believe that the Spanish Republic,
which he felt stood for the "general welfare of the all the
people of the nation," should be extended to the United
States. He suggested that the American United Front could
be built on the new labor movement:32 It was this hope in
people that was to inspire him to produce his newsletter Th
§e_t. Second, Spain reaffirmed for Seldes that the American
press deliberately lied to the public when it was
politically or financially expedient. Seldes believed that
the business-owned mainstream press in America, indeed the
world, distorted the news about Spain to protect its
established commercial interests with the Nationalists. As
one example of this relationship, Seldes claimed that the
Spanish-owned Telefonica company was owned by America I.T.&
T. [AT&T], which had several prominent Nationalists and
Catholic clergy on the list of shareholders who guaranteed

3 Seldes believed

business support for the Nationalists.3
the civil war was a class struggle between labor and big
business and therefore the newspaper businesses in America
were solidly opposed to labor and the Republic.

World opinion about Spain changed in the 19405 when the

109
Second World War brought home the threat of Fascism.
President Roosevelt even admitted that he had erred in not
supporting the Spanish Republic.“’ But by then it was too
late. According to Seldes, the Spanish Republic died
because the press of democratic countries promoted
neutrality toward Spain, supported Fascism and
misrepresented the news.

Seldes’ experience in the Spanish Civil War was to
affect him deeply for many years. It triggered a renewed
burst of vigorous protesting and he wrote in 1953,
"Everything that happened to me from 1936 to now had been
conditioned by my experience in Spain. Spain permeated
minds, penetrated hearts."35

Seldes returned from Spain in 1937 seeking a forum for
the news he had discovered about the gradual move toward
war, and he thought he had found it in the radical new

magazine hep.

110

NOTES -- CHAPTER 7

1. George Seldes, Tell the Teeth and Run (New York:
Greenberg, 1953), 228.

2. George Seldes, unidentified manuscript of a chapter,
Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

3. George Seldes, "World War Postponed Two Years," Mail
Dispatch dated 21 April, 1937, 4. Special Collections,
Philadelphia.

4. George Seldes, to Carlos Baker, Princeton University,
28 November 1961. Special Collections, Philadelphia.

5. George Seldes, Even the GodeeCan’t Change History
(N.J.: Lyle Stuart, Inc.,1976), 11.

6. George Seldes, Witness to a Centuey (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 306.

7. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

8. George Seldes, "Kill Men in Overalls, Spare Men With
Collars, Fascist Plan in Madrid," Postal Dispatch, Special
Collections, Philadelphia.

9. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

10. Tell_tbe_1rntb_aad_gsn. 228-

11. George Seldes, "A Time of Decision," chapter from
unidentified book, Special Collections, Philadelphia.

12. Witnes to a Centu , 309.
13. Tell the Teeth and Run, 239.
14. Ibid., 241.

15. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

111

16- Tell_tbe_1rutn_and_asn. 241-

17. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

18. Fitne§§_te_a_£entsrx. 307-

19. Ibid., 306.
20. Ibid., 321.
21. Ibid., 305.

22. Ibid., 306.

23. Tell the Truth egg Ben, 234.
24. Witness to a Centuey, 306.

25. Tell the Teeth ehd Run, 54.

26. George Seldes, to Francis Knight of the Passport Office
(undated). Part of the letter read, "Helen L. Seldes
appeared before the Jenner Committee and swore that she had
been a member of the party for a short time in the early
19405, and had definitely quit by 1944, and was definitely
anti-communist." Special Collections, Philadelphia.

27. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

28. Ibid.

29. George Seldes, FBI File. Special Collections. On July
29, 1944, Seldes wrote to Hoover asking about confiscated
copies of lh_Teet, and surveillance of Helen Seldes. Hoover
wrote over a year later on September 10, 1945, denying that
Helen was under surveillance and suggested that if mail was
being withheld by the FBI it would be discontinued.

Attached to the correspondence was a letter from Assist.
Postmaster James Slattery to Hoover, dated January 10, 1945,
detailing the mail that was received by Helen Seldes.
Special Collections.

30. George Seldes, to Tim W., 20 December 1957, Special
Collections, Philadelphia.

31. Ibid.

32. George Seldes, Manuscript of unidentified chapter,
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

112

33. George Seldes, W (New York: In Fact,
1943), 63.

34. Exen_the_9eds_£an1t_9bange_nistgrx. 88-
35- Tell_tbe_Trntb_and_Bsn. 239-

CHAPTER 8

EEK MAGAZINE

Seldes returned from Spain full of news about the civil
war. He, along with the hundreds of writers who visited
Spain during the civil war, sought a means of communicating
the alarming news that the Spanish Civil War was merely a
prologue to a greater and more devastating conflict, the
Second World War. Totally disillusioned with the daily
papers, Seldes submitted his work almost exclusively to
liberal left wing magazines and labor papers, such as the
Daily Workee. In 1937, however, a dream-come-true
opportunity occurred for him when he was approached to edit

a revolutionary new magazine that was to be called Ken.

THE CONCEPT
hen, named after the Scottish word "Ken," which means
to know or understand, was the brain child of Esgeire’s
owner David Smart, who had decided to produce a magazine
that would rival Leek, Life and Celliers. Smart publicized
hep as "the first mass-circulation, public-opinion-forming

magazine in history on the liberal side - one step left of

113

114

center."1 He recruited writers Ernest Hemingway, Paul
DeKruif, Raymond Gram Swing and George Seldes as editors.

The magazine was to be devoted to investigative
reporting and exposing lies and misrepresentations in the
daily press. Smart and Arnold Gringrich, editor of Esgeire,
asked Seldes to oversee the project, and he accepted with
pleasure. It was a something Seldes had always dreamed, a
magazine that was devoted to press criticism. "What had I
wanted most: what was my American dream all those years
since Pittsburgh? I had wanted the impossible. To edit and
publish a free newspaper...to undo the harm of the big
popular newspapers and magazines."2

Seldes was full of ideas and he began to rough out
concepts of the content of the magazine. He wrote that
Smart and Gringrich were enthusiastic over his ideas
including his proposal to write a press department revealing
lies in the daily press.

Gringich’s recollections of Seldes’ ideas for the
magazine are not nearly as positive as Seldes’ memories.
Gringrich wrote:

When I saw George Seldes’s dummy of what purported
to be the entire issue, I thought he was joking.
It was all done with scissors and a pastepot.
There would be a pasted-down block of copy...and
beneath it, written with grease pencil in a bold
hand, the words "This is a lie!" Then another
pasted-down block of copy, and again the
interstitial interjection, though varying
slightly..."This is a damnable lie" or "This is a
foul lie" or "This is an outrageous lie." I

couldn’t believe it, but, yes, that was the
magazine...as George told it far and wide

115

afterward, Dave and I were afraid to print, that
we chickened out...that we...suppressed.

There is no way of telling whether Seldes’ work was
approved initially by heh’s publishers. What is undeniable
is they decided to proceed with the project with Seldes as
editor.

Seldes maintained that Smart and Gringrich were so
enthusiastic over his ideas that they seemed to be
completely unaware, that by writing such exposes about
organizations linked to big business, they made themselves
vunerable to an advertising boycott. Seldes wrote that
Smart reassured him that because advertisers would be
confined to mostly men’s clothing and liquor the magazine
couldn’t be touched by any advertising action.

Seldes began work enthusiastically on the magazine.
He quickly discovered, however, that all was not perfect.
The editors were mainly contributors and the real editor was
Gringricha‘ This bothered Seldes because he thought he
would have more autonomy in producing the magazine. Seldes
ran the New York office but he felt that he was never
allowed to make real decisions about the content of the
magazine. Yet, these were minor problems. It soon became
apparent that the real obstacle to the success of hep was
the lack of advertisers.

It was disclosed to Seldes by advertiser Perley
O’Gorman that the major advertisers of Madison Avenue had

decided that if hen published one item "one step left of

116
center" they would never see one dollar in advertising

money."s

Furthermore, the advertisers were going to pull
$64,000 of advertising an issue from Esgeire if hep was in
any way a leftist magazine. Seldes eXplained, "To these
people "one step left of center" meant leftist and leftist
meant red and red of course meant Communist."6

A series of letters between Smart, Seldes and Gringrich
recorded the rapidly deteriorating relations among the three
men over the concept of hep. A letter from Gringrich to
Seldes dated December 19, 1937, was the first indication
that something was wrong: "Financial winds seem to be
blowing the daylights out of the apparently fair-weather
forum of liberalism that was one of the major tenets of hep
as you and I first planned."

Seldes wrote to Gringrich on January 18, 1938, asking
what was going on. Seldes had been working on articles
previously approved by Smart who increasingly acted as
though Seldes’ work was unsatisfactory. Seldes wrote: "I
did not propose the (American) Legion series to begin with:
it was one of the things I wanted to do after the magazine
got going, but I was encouraged to write the series, and did
so. Now Mr. Smart things [sic] I wasted two weeks of my
time."

Suppressed and faked news was to be featured in each
edition of hen, but Smart told Seldes not to belabor the

point. "Mr. Smart says once I have made the statement that

117
the press fakes the news, there is nothing more to say."

If this was how Smart felt, Seldes wondered whether he
should continue with the press department. "I was sure that
a department showing how news is faked or suppressed or
colored or distorted by newspapers and the reasons for them
would be useful. I also notice that in all the prospectuses
of Rep this is one of the main points, if not THE main
point."

In the same letter to Gringrich, Seldes also took
exception to Smart’s suggestion that he should modify his
writing for the public reading age of twelve. Seldes wrote:

I am rather shocked by the idea of a magazine for

a mentality of 12. The government I.Q. tests in

1917 showed the average mentality at 13, and the

adults with anything lower are morons. I do not

think we intend to publish a slick 25 cent

magazine for morons. I can’t for the life of me

see how Hemingway, De Kruif and other can possibly

write for a moron circulation. I stress this

point because Mr. Smart thinks that my stuff is

not aimed at a low enough mentality.7

The letter ended with Seldes going over some ideas for
stories and a repeated request for an indication of where
things stand.

The next letter, dated March 24, signalled the break
between Seldes and Smart. Smart wrote to Seldes informing
him that he was no longer to be paid as a regular staff
member of hep.

The batting average just isn’t high enough, that’s

all. The only way that a weekly payment can be

justified is by the weekly receipt of useable

material...But out of all the many things you have
sent in only a couple have hit the Ken average.

118
Smart wrote that after April he would only buy Seldes’ work
if it were up to standard.

I see no point in making a mystery about this or

hunting around for hidden reasons. A guy can be a

Mohammedan or a Mormon or a Communist...and it’s

all the same to us, the only criterion being does

he or doesn’t he turn in consistently the kind of

stuff that we consider publishable, not on any

basis of "freedom of the press," but on the less

glamorous basis of whether or not it is good of

its kind.

Seldes responded immediately and on March 26 he wrote
to Smart resigning and stating that it is most definitely a
case of freedom of the press. Seldes pointed out that it was
Smart who ordered the press department to deal with crooked
news and now Smart, himself, was trying to suppress the
news.

Seldes’ accusations of news suppression by the
publishers of hep appeared in Gringrich’s book hethipg But
the geople. Gringrich made light of Seldes’ claims of
suppression and wrote that "while other writers got
rejection slips, Seldes got suppressed." It does appear
that Seldes did indeed feel that if his work was not
reported then he was being suppressed.8 But he genuinely
believed that Smart, by failing to expose suppressed news,
had become a party to suppression. Seldes’ disillusionment
over Smart’s response manifested itself in a personal attack
against hep’s publisher. Seldes wrote in his last letter to

Smart:

Being a liberal and decent man nowadays requires
more than publishing anti-Hitler articles. It

119

requires integrity. When you told me you were
suppressing the whole series in the American
Legion because you were anxious to get the ad of
the Prudential Life Insurance Company whose vice
president was one of the big men in the Legion I
should have known that you never had any intention
to publish the left-wing, liberal and pro-labor
magazine you have been telling you would publish.
Your people here also inform me that you sell a
feature service to 100 newspapers and never had
any intention of publishing a press department
exposing the press. Your employees in Chicago and
New York tell me that you have been exploiting
Hemingway and De Kruif and my name to sell the
magazine.

Before Seldes left Ken he informed DeKruif, Swing and
Hemingway of the policy changes and all resigned. This
account differs from Gringrich’s, who claimed that only
Hemingway defected from the board of editors, although he
continued to submit pro—Spanish Republican articles to the
magazine. According to Gringrich, Ray Swing "remained a
regular and valuable contributor."1o Further, Gringrich
never mentioned that Seldes was ever on the board of editors
of the magazine.

Seldes wrote a final letter to Gringrich on May 5,
1938, explaining that he felt disappointed over what had
happened.

I realize now that it is impossible to run a

magazine that will tell the truth and make money.

I am not sore about what has happened except that

I resent having been fooled, but I do not blame

you for it. Business in America is crooked and

Fascist, and the advertisers are the spearhead of

the Fascist movement. It is too bad that Mr.

Smart cannot realize that he is playing the

Fascist game, and that time will come when the

reactionary-fascists will begin their anti-

semitic work and he will not escape. [Apparently
Smart was Jewish]...But I have now given up hope

Smart and Gringrich gave in to advertising pressure and
changed the goal of hep from "one step left of center" to

fighting both Communism and Fascism.

120

of persuading rich Jews who are linked with the
reactionary-Fascist element in America of come out
on the liberal, labor side, which is the only road
open to them today for saving themselves and their
people...The salvation for the Jews in America is
the liberal-pro-labor side.

SELDES’ CRITICISMS OF KEN P

Seldes’ hopes for a free press were shattered when i

 

The masthead of the magazine read on its first

publication the first week in April 1938:

A magazine of unfamiliar fact and informed
opinion, filling in the shadows cast by coming
events all over the world: equally opposed to the
development of dictatorship from either Left or
Right, whose one fixed editorial aim is to give
unhampered and unbiased demonstration of whatever
dangers threaten this our democracy from without
and within, in accord with Lincolnian dictum of
"Let the people know the truth and this country is
safe." Signed Arnold Gringrich, editor.

Gringrich defended the change in hep’s policy saying that

everyone was puzzled how hep could be both anti-Fascist and

anti-Communist. "This seemed, in those days of the "united

front," a contradiction in terms: if you were anti one,

people assumed that you had to be pro the other. To us, it

was very simple. We were simply against dictatorship, and

couldn’t see how, just because the black kind was bad, that

made the red kind any better.""

Seldes didn’t agree with Gringrich. He felt that the

121
publishers had sold out the liberal and labor elements for
fascist advertising. And Seldes repeated this statement in
an article for the hetiep on April 30, 1938. He began with
a sweeping indictment of the press:

The repudiation of the press by the American
people was clearly demonstrated by the 1936
Presidential election. It may not have been
complete, but it showed a vast popular
disillusion. That someone would capitalize on the
situation followed logically. In March 1937, the
idea of publishing a magazine for the masses who
had lost faith in the newspapers was discussed by
three persons in Chicago.

Seldes felt the change in hep particularly poignantly
because it was to have been the receptacle of all his dreams
of a free and uncensored press. He wrote that he had wanted
to produce a magazine, "the kind Lincoln Steffens would have
been proud to edit."

Seldes learned several important lessons from his
experience with hep:

The history of hep teaches many important lessons.
It proves for our time and generation the sad
truth learned by a dozen weeklies and monthlies in
the great muckraking era of 1905 to 1917 - that
big business and advertising will either change a
magazine’s policy from liberal to reactionary or
try to ruin the magazine. Having spent $100,000
or more to promote hep, its publishers perceived
that a liberal policy might seriously affect
advertising revenue. The impossibility of
combining progress with profit, demonstrated
before the war, is even clearer today, with the
advertising agencies becoming leaders in a class
conscious attack on progressive liberalism. On
the other hand we have proof that a large audience
exists which would support a popular magazine
really free from advertising control.12

Sadly, hep, launched in March 1938, was not to be that

122

magazine. An advertising newsletter entitled Space and Time

(April 4, 1938) was one of the magazine’s first critics.

The newsletter suggested that the publishers, in trying
appease advertisers, destroyed not only hep’s potential
an intellectual, socially conscious magazine, but also

compromised it as an advertising medium.

It is a pretty package...but headlines are bad,
subheads too long. Also, though it has the lack of
lightness of a teller of horrid truths, the truths
are not horrid enough or near enough to home to
make you give a damn. The home stories run to
doctrinaire socialism, like The hetion. The
foreign pieces are either fulminations against
Fascism - - and Hemingway goes the limit here,
advising Americans to get into the Spanish War and
lick Mussolini now - - or really good inside
stuff, about the British Intelligence Service,
Japanese in Panama, Mexico in a state of siege...
hep may present enough of the real alarming truths
of facts behind the news to make 500,000 people
pay a quarter for it every fortnight, but they
will have thus achieved only a dubious advertising
medium. Readers struck dumb by the horrible mess
we’re in are not in any happy frame of mind to
consider the merits of any product -- except, say,
liquor, as a means of getting away from it all.
But Ken, as evidence of the new magazine
conviction that the newspapers tell only half the
truth, is a significant leader. It by no means
justifies the happy Gringrich prospectus,
outlining the new and unexplored fields of
journalism which would be opened by hep. But its
very failure may give the cue.

hep does not appear to have explored new fields of

to

as

journalism. The magazine focused on international events

instead of Fascism in America, which had been Seldes’

original goal.

hep continued for about two years. It changed from a

bi-weekly to a weekly after a year, and according to

123
Gringrich this over-extended the magazine’s resources.
Circulation steadily declined and advertisers dropped off.
Gringrich also blamed the recession, and a Catholic Church
boycott of the magazine because of Hemingway’s pro-loyalist
articles. The magazine was increasingly subsidized by money
from Esgeire. hep was finally forced to close down through

lack of support in September 1939.

SUMMARY

The experience with hep was important to Seldes because
he realized that it was not possible to produce a truly free
newspaper or magazine if it relied upon advertising dollars
for support. He broke with daily journalism and the
mainstream press forever, realizing that the only way he
could really write what he believed was to start his own
newspaper. In 1940 he began producing In Fact, a newsletter
that was one of the first of its kind, devoted solely to

press criticism.

124

NOTES -- CHAPTER 8

1. George Seldes, Witpees te a Centuey (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 328.

2. George Seldes, unidentified notes, Private Collection,
Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

3. Arnold Gringrich, Nothing But the People (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1971), 138.

4. George Seldes, to Carlos Baker, 28 November 1961.
Seldes wrote, "The Hemingway, DeKruif and Spivak
announcement is [sic] pure fraud. Not one of them ever
showed up, or ever edited anything."

5. Witneee to e Qentuey, 331.
6. Ibid.

7. George Seldes, to Arnold Gringrich, 1 January 1938.

8. Seldes wrote an article entitled "Non-Conspiracy of
Silence in the Press," in E ose, February 1954, 3-4. He
berated the press for suppressing his work, which he claimed
had been deliberately ignored since he wrote Lords of the
Press in 1941.

9. George Seldes, to David Smart, 26 March 1938, Special
Collections, Philadelphia.

10. Arnold Gringrich, hothing hut People (New York: Crown
Publishers, Inc., 1971), 146.

11. Ibid., 138.

12. George Seldes, "Ken" - The Inside Story," The Nation,
30 April, 1938, 499.

CHAPTER 9

CRITICS’ REVIEWS OF SELDES’ WORK

By 1940 Seldes reached a new intensity in his attacks
of the mainstream press. Transforming his thirty years of
journalism experience into criticisms of the daily press, he
used his books and newsletter to attack the influence big
business and Fascism exerted over newspaper content.

Seldes’ claimed that his criticisms were first met with
ridicule and then later he was simply ignored.

Seldes called this treatment by the mainstream press a
"conspiracy of silence," and he claimed that it made it
difficult for him to get his books published and reviewed.1
Seldes further maintained that the conspiracy began after he
had written Leeee ef the Tress (1938), a stinging indictment
of the press, and the newspapers had:

published unfair, at times lying statements, in

book reviews...At no time in the history of

journalism, so far as I can remember in my 45

years, has there been such a general and universal

non-conspiracy of silence.

Seldes argued that the press effectively neutralized
his criticisms through this silence. "Today instead of

attacking the press resorts to silence. It learned that

this was the best way to kill a book or a man professionally

125

126
and politically."2

It is difficult to authenticate Seldes’ claim that his
criticisms were overlooked by the mainstream press, or that
he was the target of a conspiracy. However, it is possible
to examine reviews of Seldes’ work to first, place him
within the context of his times and second, know how others
responded to his criticisms. By assessing whether there was
some consensus by other writers on Seldes’ criticisms of the
press it may be possible to assess the validity of his
criticisms and thus determine whether he created an accurate
picture of how the press functioned during the first four
decades of the century.

Several reviews of Seldes’ book were found in
alternative publications, and this list of reviews, which is
by no means exhaustive, has dictated which Seldes’ books
will be examined in this chapter. (See Appendix 1 for a
complete list of Seldes’ books.)

The reviews were located in the academic journalism
journal, Jouepelisp Quaeterly, the socialist newspaper, The
Daily Worher, and the left wing magazine, The New Republic.
The reviews examined ten out of the sixteen books Seldes’
wrote between 1929 and 1953, and include reviews of several

books that Seldes’ claimed were met with silence.

127

BOOK REVIEWS

Yo ’

Seldes’ first book, Tee eep’t Print That (1929),
described censorship in several European countries. The
book sold well and hey_hepehlie reviewer Harold Norman Denny
wrote that the book was valuable because of the light it
cast upon the ”stupidity, futility and self-defeat of
peacetime, and even to some extent war-time, censorship, and
on the purity of the stream of information, which flows into
the American public mind through the channels of the
newspapers."3

Seldes had written that censorship was strongest in
Russia, Italy and Rumania, and Denny responded to that
accordingly:

There are no three countries in the world that are

regarded with more distrust by the American

public. The very presence of a censorship in

peacetime suggests to intelligent persons that

there is something to hide, and therefore such a

censorship itself creates the bad impression which

it is supposed to forestall.

Denny, however, disagreed with Seldes’ fundamental
contention that international bankers control the news.
"News must be suppressed, when unfavorable," Seldes had
written, "otherwise the market will crash; news must be
perverted at all times, otherwise new loans will be more

difficult and rates will be too high." Denny responded, "To

this reviewer, this seems a little improbable. Certainly

128

Mr. Seldes neglects to prove it."

W

heele_£epeeepe was published in 1933 and described the
new philosophies and political trends changing Europe.
Seldes considered it his finest work. Seldes’ brother,
Gilbert, reviewed the book for the hey Terh Evenipg Journal
and described it as "exceptionally fine work." Seldes "has
written a book in which everything that has happened since
the armistice is reported, put in relation to everything

else, and made intensely entertaining."‘

Freedop of the Preee

Seldes’ first attempt at applying his criticisms of the
European press to the American press found voice in the book
Freedop o; the Beess. The book was not well received, and
Seldes wrote that as long as he focused his attacks on the
overseas press his books were best sellers, but as soon as
he started criticizing the American press he was ignored.5

Reviewer of hreeeop of the Press, researcher Kenneth
Olson of Rutgers University wrote in Tournalism Queeterly:
"Mr. Seldes’ new book is perhaps the most stinging
indictment of the American press since Silas Bent’s
Ballyheo. Many newspapermen [sic] will damn it as
scurrilous slander but the author marshals fact after fact,

case after case to prove his contention that advertisers,

129
patent medicine manufacturers, public utilities, oil
companies ... color and suppress the news and corrupt both
press and public."‘

Despite Olson’s obvious approval of Seldes’ message he
concluded that Seldes’ accusations were based upon too many
generalizations:

Interesting and thought-provoking as is Seldes’

book one cannot escape the feeling that he has

generalized from too few cases to indict the whole

American press. No one disputes the fact that

some papers are edited by the business office, but

no one who knows the newspapers and publishers of

his territory will agree that the entire press is

as black as he has painted it.

Seldes’ sweeping generalizations about the whole press
also drew criticism from his liberal supporters. N Yor
Post publisher David Stern wrote to Seldes telling him that
he was considering not running a review of the book because,
"although I get off easy (Stern ran a liberal weekly, which
Seldes felt was one of the most honest papers in America), I
owe a duty to my colleagues to whom you are unfair in your

severe criticism."7

You Ca ’ 0

Another who thought Seldes was severe in his criticism
was O.W. Riegel, who reviewed Seldes’ next book, You een’t
Do Thet (1938). The book focused upon the growth of
international Fascism and Reaction, and Riegel felt Seldes
overstated his cause:

Mr. Seldes is a good hater, and he writes with

130

passion. Perhaps the facts warrant the alarm,

which Mr. Seldes seems to feel, and call for

passionate denunciation in books which are low

priced for mass sale. Many readers may feel,

however, that Mr. Seldes has overstated his case,

and that the prospect of an evolution toward

justice and security will not be helped by a book

which is of the nature to a call to arms.8.
Riegel conceded that although Seldes offered a constructive
program to implement changes that would safeguard civil
liberties he also pointed out that the proposed program
would increase the chances of a reactionary backlash.
Riegal wrote, "This comment is not intended as a criticism
of Mr. Seldes for writing polemics: it is merely a gloomy
observation." According to Riegel, "Mr. Seldes is perhaps
the most vigorously articulate spokesman of the group which

is ceaselessly vigilant for evidence of collusion between

the American press and reaction."

Lords ef the Eeeee

Seldes found more evidence of this collusion in his
eighth book, Leeee ef the Press (1941). Seldes refocused
his attack on the big business owners of the mainstream
press, calling press lords Robert McCormick, Randolph Hearst
and Howard Scripps perverters of news. The book was met
with hostility, and Seldes wrote that "there were a few
reviews, almost all short, angry and defensive."9

Yet, a favorable review of the book appeared in the

magazine The_hey_hepehlie.10 Journalist W.L. White
described Leeee_ee_the_£eeee as the "most important book of

131

the year for men who work on daily newspapers, as well as
for those who read them with any discrimination. Most of
them will agree that it is a fair estimate." White pointed
out that Seldes, in the course of producing this deeply
significant book, "caressed the boss with a red-hot poker,
with the result that many reviewers, after wrestling with
their consciences, may feel it expedient to dismiss it with
a disparaging paragraph."

White certainly didn’t. He defended Seldes and
rationalized Seldes’ attacks at the mainstream press:

If he takes the hew Teeh Times to task somewhat
severely for coloring its news it is not because
it is a frequent offender, but rather because its
reputation for impartiality has been so high.

White agreed with many of the points Seldes made,
including his assertion that the news is slanted against the
working class in favor of those with money:

Few newspapermen will take issue with his vigorous
chapters on Hearst, McCormick, Chandler and other
big names in the American Publishers
Association...If these Press Lords are with few
exceptions reactionary, the answer, as Mr. Seldes
frequently implies, lies in the economic structure
of the present-day newspaper. For in order to
print the truth you must have not only the will to
do so, but the money as well.

Concluding the review, White applauded Seldes’ efforts
to point out the short-comings of the system:

But even though American democracy has developed a
healthy tolerance to poisoned news, George Seldes
has rendered a distinguished public service in
deflating the windy pretensions of the American
publishers. As watchdogs of freedom, few of them
can be taken seriously, even though they snarl
viciously when anyone approaches their cash

132

registers.

Leeee_ee_the_£eeee was also reviewed by researcher Eric
Allen, who observed, non-committally, that the book deserved
consideration." "While the book is a polemic, a hard—
hitting and unsympathetic attack, still a distinct attempt
is made at objectivity." He added, "Seldes has made a
pretty good analysis of the grounds of much of the current
dissatisfaction with the press that is felt in wide circles
outside the conservative business element."

Seldes compared the press to an ideal model of how the
press should theoretically work. Allen saw this as a
weakness in Seldes’ argument: "The book has both the
advantages and disadvantages of this Utopian method."

The reviewer compared Seldes to the liberal press
critic, William Allen White, who has "treated with equal
vigor the same cerebral propositions that Mr. Seldes makes.
Mr. Seldes rather lacks - a serener faith in human social
evolution, a greater willingness to see, without illusion,
yet without utter despair, the publishing problem, and a
more gracious literary style."12 Allen concluded:
"Nevertheless, Leees ot the Eress is a substantial and
serious contribution to journalistic controversy...and an
immediate advance on some of the Brass Checks of the past."

The_§eeee_eheeh, written by author Upton Sinclair in
1920, was one of the first books to expose corruption within

the press. Seldes admitted that Sinclair and The Brass Check

133

influenced him and the books he wrote about the press.

The hey Yeeh eity Heeele Teibene also perceived a
relationship between Leeee_ee_the_2eeee and the heass Check.
In its review of Leeee_et_the_geeee on November 14, 1938,
the heeele_Teihepe wrote the book " brings up to date the
attack made twenty years ago by Upton Sinclair in The Brass

QESQE-"

Like the geese ehech, Leeee of the Preee upset many in
the newspaper business. A review of the book in the liberal
New Teeh host revealed Seldes had even alienated left wing
publishers, upon whom Seldes usually counted for support.
The New York Post editorial on November 22, 1938, described
Seldes as the "hairshirt of the newspaper business."
Despite calling the book a "heavy handed" critique, the
editorial acknowledged the "part of his book which deals
factually with newspaper practice" while thoroughly
disagreeing with Mr. Seldes’ proposed solutions. The
editorial read in part:

We used to think George Seldes was a liberal, and
we believe he was. But his insistence that a labor
union ought to move in and take over a business is
proof that some time during the night Seldes got
up from his chair on the liberal platform, walked
to the extreme left and went over the side with a
thud, which sounded like the end of an overripe
tomato. We don’t know what to call the particular
brand of extremism which our former liberal friend
now suddenly reveals. It isn’t trade unionism
because the Guild - his own union and a
progressive one - won’t even consider it. It
isn’t socialism if we read the Socialist Party
platform aright. It isn’t communism, for Stalin
just the other day informed the Russian labor
unions that he was running industry and that all

134

he wanted from them was 100 percent support. So it

must be something George just thought up.

Whatever its name, he is far ahead of most

extremists of his day. We can understand how

Seldes, the former newspaperman, resents the

pressure groups that sometimes try to bludgeon

publishers into changing their editorial policy.

But we can’t understand how he hOpes to cure the

situation by setting up his own ‘pressure group’

to perform the same tyrannical acts demanding his

kind of editorials instead of the other fellow’s.

The editorial concluded by defending the American press
and suggesting that not only are there just as many good
deeds done by the press but that it is also far ahead of the
press in any other country. The reviewer pointed out that
some of the press lords listed by Seldes as reactionary have
done splendid jobs at rooting out venal political
corruption, such as McCormick’s Chicage Tribune, cited the
reviewer. Seldes’ claimed it was one of the most reactionary
papers in the country, "yet if the whole truth be told it
has been a powerful force in attacking many forms of
municipal and state corruption."

One of Seldes few supporters was The Daily Worker but
even its reviewer, Seymour Waldman, had difficulty with
Seldes’ proposed solution to the problem of press
corruption.13 Waldman, while indicating that the book was
"one of the most important contributions to progressive
journalism since Upton Sinclair’s Beass eheck," suggested
that Seldes’ proposal that newspapermen should run the

newspapers is "utopian and anti-climatic." "It is difficult

to understand why Seldes, who refers a score of times to

135
publishers as big business, as capitalists, expects them to
even consider such hari-kari." The article concluded, "A
Seldes’ book nowadays is distinctly news. [This belies
Seldes’ claim that there was complete silence about his
books.] All the more reason for him to be wary of
romanticism and utopianism both of which serve merely to
provide a demagogic out ...for anti-labor redbaiters and
anti-soviet distorters."

Lords e: the Tress was by far Seldes’ most
controversial book. His claims that it was not adequately
reviewed were partly substantiated by a letter on May 9,
1938, from Laetitia Bolton of Modern Age Books who wrote the
book had been ignored by the mainstream press:

Why then should this book be greeted by a silence

distinguished by unanimity as well as eloquence.

To date it has been ignored not only by all the

New York Dailies but by the weekly reviews as
well, with the exception of the Saturday Review of

Literatsre. W and L._Yeri_<_e_rhe New .

Further evidence of a conspiracy of silence against
Lords ot the Eeess was found in a Federated Press Bulletin
on March 3, 1939. The release reported that the American
League of Writers, who were committed to promoting
suppressed liberal books like heeee, had surveyed newspapers
and found the majority of U.S. newspapers had ignored the
book.15 The release also cited the responses of several
reviewers which indicated how unpopular Seldes’ book was.

Harry Hansen of The Weele Telegrap wrote; "Seldes’ book is

not in any way liberal but radical and iconoclastic."

136
Stanley Walker of the Heeald Tribune accused Seldes of
"hysteria, malice, innuendo, invective" and Professor Allen

Nevins in the hepeey_Tipee called him "biased and unfair."

The heete hee

Many of the reviewers took exception to Seldes’ style
of criticism, including journalism history researcher Frank
Mott, who in his Journalism Quarterly review of Seldes’
twelfth book, The hacts Are, disputed Seldes’ understanding
of the word "fact." "Fact does not mean to George Seldes as
it does to most people, the stalemate of an actuality; to
him the word is a symbol for a conclusion often far-fetched
and illogical, which is tied up with his peculiar philosophy
regarding the press and radio."“

Mott wrote that he tried to understand Seldes’
criticisms by reading 1p hac .

It has been an amusing, but, on the whole, not a

very profitable experience. The trouble with

George Seldes is that he thinks he is being

factual, and even documentary (another favorite

word), when he is only chasing his own ideas and

emotions around in circles.

Yet, it appears that Mott did not receive the newsletter
willingly.

I followed his little sheet In Fact for a year or

so - though, like many of the 100,000 he [Seldes]

claims for his mailing list, I was a dragooned

subscriber.

lp_£eet was supported by mass subscriptions from the unions,

and this may have been what Mott was referring to.

137

Seldes’ generalized attacks irritated Mott, who
concluded, ”The way to read our author is to forget about
facts and concentrate on the gyrations of a flashing mind
and a violent set of emotions." He suggested a more
appropriate title for the book would be hy Notions Are.

Seldes had difficulty in getting The Fects Are
published. He received a letter from his agent, Nannine
Joseph, on July 29, 1942, which said that Simon and Schuster
wouldn’t accept the book for publication because

They feel that in some places you go to such

extremes that you arouse antagonism and

distrust...You sometimes carry the idea out to

lengths that seem too great, as for instance when

you say that all our difficulties are traceable to

advertising, which is the impression part of the

book gives... after all the press could not
prosper as it has if it lied about everything.

Facts sc

But Seldes insisted that the press did lie about
everything of importance and further, that there was an
increase in Fascist influence over news content. His book
heete_ep§_£eeeiep (1943) identified Fascist forces in the
American government and press and was reviewed by Charles E.
Rogers in the March 1944 Journalism Quarterly. Rogers
described the book as a "highly spiced potpourri of opinion,
fact, invective and generalizations based upon selected
data." He wrote that Seldes’ documentation of his
accusations was not very substantial and concluded:

Students of journalism will go along with Mr.

138

Seldes in agreeing that, judged by American

democratic standards, some newspapers deserve a

bad name. But random sample of fascist newspapers

don’t prove the whole pack fascist.

heets ape heseisp did not sell well and it couldn’t
escape being labelled Communist. This was confirmed by a
letter Seldes received from one of his subscribers who had
inquired of her local library for a copy of Facts and
Fasciep. The reader enclosed a June 16, 1944, letter she
received from the Public Library of Cincinnati. In it the
librarian had written the library did not carry the book
Faete epe Resciep because the publisher, New Union Press,
was not reputable. (Seldes’ own company, In Fact Inc.,
published the book and New Union Press was simply the
printer.) Further, the librarian quoted in the letter a
review of the book by the ehristiep Centuey, which damned
Seldes’ book. It read in part:

The slant of the present volume, as of the

publication which sponsors it, is so violently

pro-labor (and in a less degree pro-soviet) that

the wary reader will read it with the same

reservations that the author suggests for the
application to the press and radio.

One d 'ca 5

Undetered Seldes continued to attack the press and he
published his book Ope Thoesand Ameeicans, in 1947, naming
the 13 most powerful families in America and showing how
they owned America and controlled the press. The book was

reviewed by George Bird of Syracuse University, who

139
condemned Seldes’ work as "distorted," stating that Seldes’
attempt to show that a group of 1,000 men control the United
States is unfair to the 10 million capitalists.17

Seldes made no attempt to be objective in his
judgment, wrote Bird. "Instances of unbalanced evidence
number in the scores, making it difficult to take Mr.
Seldes’ work seriously. His method of presentation is much
like that of Upton Sinclair in his almost forgotten heeee
Mo"

Bird found Seldes’ accusations repetitive:

Mr. Seldes adds nothing new to his twisted theses
expressed in earlier works: that any item omitted
from print was necessarily suppressed; that this
suppression was ordered by the advertisers...and
that the American people are uniformly betrayed by
the press and by the nature of "big business."

Bird wrote that Seldes did not present a balanced
picture of the press and that, while numbering Fascists
among the enemies of America, he completely ignored the
threat of Communism. Bird also questioned the accuracy of
Seldes’ assertions: "The book’s claim to accuracy rests upon
a "documentation” that often is spurious, inasmuch as a very
large part if it is mere opinion given before this or that
congressional committee." The reviewer suggested that a
more accurate appraisal of the press would come from editors
and publishers and such a work would be of more benefit to
journalism than "this jaundiced appraisal."

Qpe_Theeeepe_Apeeieepe was also reviewed by journalist
Lewis Gannet of the hew York Hereld Tribune, who agreed with

140

Bird that Seldes was too biased to comment with any

credibility on the press. Gannet wrote on January 15, 1948:
The concentration of economic power in this
country is appalling and a careful study of the
relations of economic power to press attitude and
political power could be of the utmost value. But
to be useful it will have to be performed by a
student with a less flagrant bias, a greater
understanding of economic and psychological
realities, than Mr. Seldes evidences in his
book...The American press is far from perfect, and
big business still speaks with the loudest voice
in America, but the American public has a curious
way of making up its own mind, and the widely
irresponsible mixture of fact and fancy in lyQQQ
heericape reminds me of nothing more than of the

editorial misdemeanors of our yellowest and most
reactionary press.

Frank Mott, who reviewed The hacts Are, also had a
problem with the factual basis of One Thoueand Americans. In
the hew Toeh heeale Teibune Weekly hook Review on March 7,
1948, Mott made the same point as Bird, that by quoting
someone’s opinion in the congressional records does not make
it fact. Mott added, if this was the case, Seldes would be
the target of some "documentation" himself. Seldes had been
denounced by congress member Thomas on March 6, 1946, as
"the ace smear-artist of the American communists" and on
January 13, 1948, congress member Hoffman called him "a mass
producer of falsehood and vilification."

Mott disagreed with Seldes’ basic contention that the
press was corrupt. He wrote that an assumption repeated
often enough does not make it true. "Take the matter of
suppression of news. Is it always a sinister suppression

when a paper does not print what Seldes is most interested

141
in?" Mott cited comments from A.J. Leibling, a fellow
press critic, who said of Seldes, "He makes too much of the
failure of newspapers." Quoting Leibling, Mott added that
Seldes "too often treats errors as lies, when they appear in
the press and lies as the effect of a deliberate and
universal conspiracy of publishers." Yet, Mott writes that
Leibling conceded, "it is nice to have George around to tell
us the press is not perfect."

The press has many sins, Mott concluded,"but some
readers will prefer the intellectual integrity of Oswald
Garrison Villard or the gay acidity of Leibling himself, to
the blind guidance of George Seldes."

Seldes wrote to the editor in response to this last
review stating that he had complained to Mott’s college for
several years because of the professor’s "maliciously
libelous statements about my books. I mention this to show

the malicious revenge he has written into his review."18

The Eeeple er’t hpoy
In 1949 Seldes wrote The People Don’t Kngy, which

examined lying in the press during the post war years.
Seldes was outraged by a review of the book written by Keith
Wilson of the Qpahe heeld-heeele Megazine, who had titled
his article, "George Seldes Froths Again." Wilson dismissed
the book and Seldes’ message that the U.S. press was in a

conspiracy with big business to mislead the public:

 

142
It’s the same argument he has printed inY You Cant

Print—That and W and his leftist
magazine Tp__eet. It is one thing to make so

serious a charge and another to prove it. Mr.

Seldes makes it loudly and sensationally but his

evidence is flimsy, trivial and often irrevelant.

For the most part Mr. Seldes prefers you to

believe him because he says it’s so.

Seldes scrawled in the margin of the review: "he is knave
and a fool" and wrote to him challenging him to document his
charge that the book was not based upon fact.

Overall, Seldes had difficulty getting the book
reviewed and he wrote to Editor apd Publisher on December
22, 1949, "I have not only received unfavorable reviews -
and some outright lying reviews - but in most instances

there has been if I may use a very old cliche - a conspiracy

of silence."19

Tell the Teeth epd Run

Seldes’ genuinely felt that the mainstream press was
conspiring to destroy his career through its silence. His
books were not being reviewed and his literary agent,
Nannine Joseph, suggested he use a pseudonym.20 He
refused, and began work on the autobiographical Tell The
Truth epe Ru . It was published in 1953 and Seldes again
claimed that it received no attention from reviewers. One
person who did review the book, however, was author Leon
Uris, who wrote in a letter to Greenberg Publishers on
November 16, 1953: "For many years I have followed Mr.

Seldes’ amazing career and read his books. He had remained

143
in my mind as one of the most courageous men of our age. As
with all his books Tell The Teeth end Run should be a text
for all journalists." Uris also wrote to Seldes on November
10, 1953, complimenting him on his book: "I would like to
see for myself what type of case iron constitution you must
have to withstood so much abuse all these years."

Uris was not the only one who admired Tell the Truth
and hep. Columnist Mildred Gilman wrote to Seldes indicating
her appreciation of the book. "I was happy to have you give
Ruth Hale [writer and feminist] her due...also you are the
first to write seriously and lovingly of [journalist] Floyd
Gibbons."21 Journalist Milton Resier also thought Tell_the
Truth ane hun was such an important book that he wrote in a
March 10, 1954, letter to Seldes: "If the Pulitzer Prize
Committee were on the level you would have the 1953 award

for the best biography."

Criticisms of ln Fact

Books were not Seldes only avenue for criticism. He
found then too slow in identifying immediately all the lies
in the mainstream press. In 1940 he started In Feet, a
newsletter devoted to up-to-date press criticism.
Researchers Dennis and Bertrand wrote, "In Fact was a
personal vehicle and every word represented George Seldes’
personal passions."22

lp_£eet endured for ten years, dogged by controversy.

144

It reached a maximum circulation in 1946 of 176,000 before
subscriptions began to decline after being branded communist
and fascist. The newsletter was eventually forced out of
business in 1950. Seldes received many letters of support
from subscribers during the final days of In Fa t, and in
his response to a letter, from subscriber Meyer Field,
Seldes reiterated the goal of In Fact:

My hope has always been to find a quarter million,

even a million persons willing to support a

liberal, non-party, independent publication

devoted to telling the facts suppressed or

distorted by 99 percent of the press. The 60,000

who stuck with me to the end are not enough to

pay the costs, which were over $2,500 a week.23

Although Tp_heet was forced out of business because of
lack of financial support it did have its fans and among
them was Senator Harry Truman, who wrote to Seldes: "I
believe you are on the right track...and I hope that you are
successful.”“‘ Columnist Drew Pearson also applauded
Seldes: ”The job you have been doing is one of the best in
the nation when it comes to awakening the American

public . "25

Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the Interior for
the Roosevelt Administration, was also a friend of In Fact.
He wrote ”Tp_eeet serves again to emphasize that the
American people desire the facts and admire good hardhitting
reporting . "26

Seldes always maintained that he was not alone in his

battle for a free press. He claimed that not only was lp

Fect a platform for the vast silent majority of people who

145
regularly asked Seldes to investigate issues, but also that
hundreds of members of the Newspaper Guild besieged him with

3' He said in an interview with the

articles and ideas.
author:

Everybody was in my favor, you understand, I wasn’t a

kicked around dog of journalism. I had the support of

everyone in the profession. All sorts of men high in
the profession would send me stuff, they’d tip me off
on some general trend that I should watch for.28

A letter from Eric Sevareid, CBS network’s director of
news, seemed to substantiate Seldes’ claim. Sevareid wrote
to Seldes on August 5, 1947: "I noticed the item in your
paper the other day and I felt much pleased. I would be
happy to think that I was even the indirect cause of that
minor furor."

The newsletter also received praise from press critic
Upton Sinclair. Sinclair initially had some reservations
about lp_£eet and he wrote on May 2, 1945: "I wish that I
could give you a complete and unreserved endorsement of lp
Eact." Sinclair felt that he coudn’t fully support the
newsletter because of Seldes’ denunciations of the
preparations for the Second World War in 1939 and 1940.
Seldes responded to Sinclair’s letter, May 26, 1945,
disappointed at the older critic’s reticence.

I know that Tp_heet has its limitations but I also

know that it is the most important anti-Fascist

publication in America...it has a tremendous

effect because it not only reaches 700,000

persons, but its anti-fascist items are taken up

by the entire labor press...I have some 20,000

letter of approval received in the past five
years. The two men I honor most in American

146

letters, Dreiser and you, sent letters for the

first issue... that is why I regret all the more

your meager and cautious four lines.

Yet, on August 7, 1947, in a complete turnabout
Sinclair wrote, "There appears to be each week a number of
important news items which our capitalist press refuses to
publish: or at any rate to feature. I find these items in
in haet and I do not see any contradictions of them. It is
like a weekly hrass Check to me."

Despite these endorsements Tn haet had its share of
enemies. Frederick Woltman, reporter for New Teeh Worle
Tele r , wrote in an article for the American Mercuey that
"Seldes dopesheet ... provides such a perfect object lesson
in camouflaged communist assaults on public opinion.””

Harry T. Saylor of the Philadelphia Recore had the same
concerns about In Fact’s perceived Communist affiliations.
He wrote to Seldes April 2, 1946: "You used to stand out, in
my opinion as one of America ablest writing men and one of
the most courageous. But in the last few years you seem to
lose your fine sense of discrimination."

The American Newspaper Guild also attacked Seldes.
Seldes accused the Guild’s editor, Wilbur H. Baldinger, of
lying about the unions. Newspaper Guild president Milton
Murray wrote to Seldes on May 24, 1944, saying "the American
Newspaper Guild representing 22,000 working newspaper

people, having considered your scurrilous assaults on the

Guild Reporter and its editor Wilbur H. Baldinger, directed

147
me to write to you expressing contempt for your scabrous
journalism."
Summary

From the reviews and personal letters examined in this
chapter it is apparent that, although Seldes had his
supporters, his work drew a lot of criticism from his peers.
Many of Seldes’ critics acknowledged that he was raising
important issues, but he seems to have alienated support
through his aggressive manner and uncompromising approach.
This led him to be labelled radical but he remained
steadfast in the belief that the press had to be free
because it was the most important force working for freedom
of the human spirit. Seldes invested the press with such
importance that he insisted that it was not possible to
compromise with those who wished to subvert the press and
prevent it from being free.

Seldes was attacked for offering solutions that his
critics considered idealistic and extremist, but were they
really? He proposed that not only should reporters have
greater involvement in the business side of newspapers but
that they should be unionized to provide economic security
and independence, and thus withstand publishers’ threats to
change copy to protect profits. He further insisted that
readers of newspapers should question everything they read,
that a labor newspaper be established to challenge the

papers of the establishment and that congress should

148
investigate the press magnates and their connections to big
business. To some critics these seemed an impractical
solutions to lying and distortion in the press. Yet, in
1947, five years after Seldes had articulated these
proposals in LQIQS of the geess, the Hutchinson’s
Commission, which investigated the functioning of the press,
proposed that the press should be regulated by a code of
ethics. In addition, the Newspaper Guild insisted that the
unionization of journalists was a way to afford them
economic security and thus avoid corruption.30

That these other organizations were echoing the same
sentiments about the press as Seldes, indicates that his
criticisms had a degree of validity.

Yet, Seldes’ solutions, although ahead of their time,
were undeniably attacks on the very foundations of the
press, which made it difficult to redress his criticisms.
For example he wanted to see advertising, newspapers’ main
source of revenue, regulated. He wanted the press to print
Federal Trade Commission Reports and their findings about
the harmful effects of various products. Yet, Seldes was not
totally unaware of the impracticality of his suggestions.
In a debate with liberal magazine publisher David Stern,
Seldes’ acknowledged Stern’s need to compromise with
business. He wrote:

As in all my precious battles with Stern over the

... hope of a free press in the United States,

Stern won the battle with ...me as he won all
others, with just this simple statement: "What do

149
you want me to do, take a quixotic stand, print
the truth about everything including bad medicine,
impure food and crooked stock market offerings,
and lose all my advertising contracts and go out
of business -- or make compromises with all the
evil elements and continue to publish the best
liberal newspaper possible under this compromising
circumstances?

The thrust of Seldes’ argument was that business interests
should remain separate from the press. He believed that the
press should be a public service and that as long as big
business owned the press they would never be free. In
hindsight his goal, albeitly idealistic, is hardly radical,
but at a time when the press were closely associated with
big business some obviously considered it so. Seldes didn’t
think of himself as an extremist, and he wrote that if the
Newspaper Guild failed as a practical road to freedom of the
press, "those of us who are interested in getting there will
have to turn again to roads which realists call ...
idealistic. "32

It wasn’t just the content of Seldes’ criticisms that
alienated people, it was the way he said it that drew
attacks from his critics. He was repetitive in his comments
and he was impassioned in his method of protest, and the
vehemence with which he espoused his views hurt his own
cause. It is evident that Seldes could not accept abuses of
the press calmly, even though he was cautioned by his friend
John Steele, the Tribune correspondent for London, back in

1925 to modify his responses. Steele wrote to Seldes on

August 12, 1925: "I know that it is hard to write calmly

1'1”

 

150
about this kind of thing, but I do think that you sometimes
hurt your own case by the heat with which you press it."

Seldes impassioned method of protest may have
discouraged some supporters but he admitted that he adopted
this style in order to reach the widest possible audience.
He was a true democratic socialist and he wanted to reach
the widest possible audience, not just the liberal
intellectuals. His believed that, if the public was fully
informed, it was possible to motivate them into a grassroots
reaction against press corruption.

Seldes’ criticisms, however, were also weakened by his
generalizations. He claimed that the main object of the
American Fascists was to "end civil liberties, destroy labor
unions and end free press." He insisted that big business
was organized against labor and that the National
Association of Manufacturers were corrupters of America

Congress . 33

He also maintained that ninety-eight percent of
the press was not free and that fifty-nine men ruled
America.M These figures were difficult to prove, and
supposing that they were true, even harder to act upon.
From the reviews examined in this chapter it appears
Seldes’ criticisms were considered controversial by some of
his peers. Yet, in these same reviews, there was some
consensus of his criticisms of the press, which would

suggest that Seldes’ portrait of the press during this

period had a degree of accuracy.

151

NOTES -- CHAPTER 9

1. George Seldes, "Non-Conspiracy of Silence in the
Press,"_hepeee, February 1954, 3.

2. Ibid.

3. Harold Norman Denny, review of Toe Can’t Print That, by
George Seldes, In The New Republie (May 8 1929): 310.

4. Gilbert Seldes, review of World Panorama, by George
Seldes, In hethork Evening Journal Saturday 10, 1933.

5. Eepose, 3.

6. Kenneth Olson, review of Freedom of the Press, by
George Seldes, In Journalism Quarterly (September 1935):
320.

7. According to a typed note in the column of the
editorial run by the hey York Poet, publisher, David Stern,
held up the review because it was so harsh on the daily
press. The review, which was cut to one-third its original
size, was run on the 15 November and the editorial followed
on the 22 November.

8. O.W. Riegel, review of You Can’t Do That, by George
Seldes, In geeepeliep_Qeeeteely 15 (September 1938): 298.

9. The Pilot, February 3, 1939

10. W. L. White, review of herds of theiPreee, by George
Seldes, In The New Republic (November 30 1938): 107

11. Eric W. Allen, review of Lords of the Press, by George
Seldes, In heurpalism Quarterly 16 (June 1939): 178.

12. Allen, 179.

 

13. Seymour Waldman, review of Lords of the Preee, by
George Seldes, In Qeily Worker (November 25 1938):

14. Laetitia Bolton of Modern Age Books, to George Seldes,
9 May 1938. Special Collections, Van Pelt Library,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

152

15. The_£ilet, February 3, 1939.

16. Frank Mott, review of The Eacts Are, by George Seldes,
In W (December 1943): 335.

17. George Bird, review of Qpe Thoesene Ameeicans, by
George Seldes, In Jeeepeliep_Qeeeteely 25 (June 1948): 177.

18. George Seldes, to editor of eeuepalism Quarterly, 3
March 1948. Special Collections, Philadelphia.

19. George Seldes, to Mr. Brown, editor of Editor and

heblishee thanking him for reviewing Tell the Teeth and Run,
22 December 1949. Special Collections, Philadelphia.

20. Nannine Joseph, to George Seldes, 14 January 1954.
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

21. Mildred Gilman, to George Seldes, 23 October 1953.
Special Collections, Philadelphia.

22. Dennis and Bertrand, 120.

23. George Seldes, to Meyer Field, 17 October 1950. Special
Collections, Philadelphia.

24. Harry Truman, to George Seldes, 27 April 1940. Special
Collections, Philadelphia.

25. George Seldes, ws W ’ ' . (Brochure)

26. Harold Ickes, to George Seldes, 26 April 1945. Special
Collections.

27. George Seldes, hevee Tiee oe Protesting, 23.

There were dozens of letters, among Seldes’ papers, from
people asking Seldes to investigate issues. For example a
letter from Shaemas O’Sheel to Seldes, 31 August 1943 asked
Seldes to expose W. Philip Simms "whose stuff in Scripps
Howard Chain is as poisonous as Peglers’...Please tackle him
George, lets know who he 15, whose work he’s doing."

Seldes also supplied information to Senator Paul Badger who
wrote thanking Seldes for the information on National
Association of Manufacturers: and to Harold Ickes on the
tobacco industry and on freedom of the press for a debate
Ickes participated in 1939.

28. George Seldes, Interview by Helen Fordham, tape
recording, 10 December 1990.

153

29. Woltman, 587.

In light of Woltman’s comments about Seldes and In Fact a
letter from Freda Kircheway, editor of The Natiop, to
Seldes, December 4, 1944, is very illuminating. She wrote:
"I don’t like the Mercury point of view. They ride their
anti-Communist hobby too hard and besides are too ready to
print any old article just for its sensation value."

30. George Seldes, Eeeeeep of the Eress (New York: Garden
City Publishing Company, 1937), 360.

31- George Seldes. Fitness_tg_a_§enturx (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), 308.

32. W. 363-

33. George Seldes, The hacts Are (New York: In Fact Inc.,
1942), 85.

34. Freedom of the Press, 215.

CHAPTER 10

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

To understand how the experiences related in the
previous chapters motivated George Seldes’ life of protest,
it is important to first appreciate his paradigm of society.
He grew up in a socially responsible environment in which
his father encouraged him to think deeply about the
philosophical and political issues confronting society. He
evolved into a freethinker and came to believe in democracy,
freedom and liberty, not as abstract concepts but as
fundamental rights. Inherent in this liberal perception of
society was a belief that the press played a critical role
in the effective functioning of a democracy. Seldes
believed that political democracy relied upon a well-
informed public, and he felt the press had a social
responsibility to act as a conduit for the information
required by the public to make informed decisions. Seldes
best summarized his view of the press when he cited
President Lincoln, who wrote:

I am a firm believer in the people, if given the

truth, they can be depended upon to meet any

national crisis. The great point is to bring them

the real facts.1

Seldes believed the press created public opinion and

154

155
therefore had to be free of vested interests, like big
business. It was his belief in democracy and the power of
the press that was fundamental to all of his criticisms.

Seldes’ criticisms were characterized by his idealism.
He remained an idealist throughout his life and he measured
the performance of the press against utopian concepts,
focusing on what should be, rather than what was. This is
how he assessed the performance of the press in its coverage
of the First World War, Italian Fascism, Mexico and Spain.
The press, in each of these experiences, were found
inadequate by Seldes, and each separate incident contributed
to his understanding of the nature and extent of press
corruption.

In 1929, Seldes put his idealism about the press into
action and began to write, using his experiences as a
foreign correspondent to illustrate the inadequacies of the
press. He challenged the accepted reports about his
experiences and shared the knowledge that the First World
War was fought for profits: that Italian Fascism was a
threat to world-wide democracy; and that big business
controlled American diplomacy in Mexico and Spain. Like the
pieces of a puzzle, each of these experiences fit together,
to create a picture of press corruption and business control
of the news. Seldes could do little about the powerful and
wealthy groups that manipulated these events, but he could

attack the press, which he believed not only failed to

156

report the truth but deliberately lied and distorted the
news. Seldes, who also believed the press had the power to
make the world into an "industrial democracy in which
poverty would be unknown," felt that the press had betrayed
its role as public informers to became "the most powerful
force against the general welfare of the majority of the
people."2

I have seen the powerful press of the world, not

only our American press lords, Hearst, Howard

Patterson McCormick, Gannett, Knight and others

... the press of most major countries - line up

with reaction to fight the common man. I saw how

these press lords operated, the evil they wrought.

Never in history were so many people misled by so

few.3

Seldes’ books became warnings that events were
occurring in the world that threatened freedom and
democracy. Further, these events were not being reported
because the press had become a tool of wealthy and powerful
businesses, who undermined liberal values in an effort to
retain control in a rapidly changing world. New idealogies
challenged established patterns of power during the first
four decades of the twentieth century. Fascism - associated
with the established rich, and Socialism - the banner of the
workers, battled it out. In some respects Seldes’ fight for
a free press became a class war. He became the self-
appointed spokesperson for the vast silent majority who,
after centuries of repression by the wealthy, were beginning

to demand a voice in their own government.

Seldes initially focused his criticisms on overseas

 

157
news, writing about Mussolini and Fascist terrorism and
Russian censorship. In the mid-19305, however, he began to
see the same patterns of censorship, control and Reaction
emerging in America and began his criticisms of the American
press. Although his views were met first with opposition
and ridicule, and then later with silence - a claim that was
substantiated in studies by Jenson and Bertrand - he
continued to protest because he could see the forces of
Reaction defeating Democracy. Seldes could see this battle
against Reaction in the millions who worked for starvation
wages while the Hearsts and DuPonts made billions. He saw
it in the growing fight against civil liberties and the
increase in racism and anti-semitism. And he recognized it
in the propaganda against the qualities of tolerance,
freedom and understanding.

Seldes continued to protest because he believed that
people were capable of change provided they were given the
correct information. This belief was fundamental to his
years of protest, and it was the Spanish Civil War, more
than any other single event, that reaffirmed his faith in
humankind. Spain showed him that people, although fed lies
by the mainstream press, resonated with the truth when they
heard it. Spain also became a metaphor for Seldes’ own
battle with the establishment. He identified with the
Republic which he felt, like himself, struggled for freedom

in the face of a disinterested and reactionary world.

158

Even with his experiences in Spain, Seldes believed
that it was possible to criticize the press from within the
system, using established magazines and newspapers to inform
the public that freedom and democracy were under threat.
However, his experience with the magazine hep made him
realize that it was not possible to remain within the
mainstream press and protest. There were too many controls
on newspaper and magazine content, through politics and
advertising -- even the most liberal was not immune -- and
he came to understand that if he was to freely criticize the
press he had to run his own paper.

In 1940 Seldes produced his newsletter, lp Fact, which
became a vehicle for his criticisms of the mainstream press.
Using congressional records and federal trade commission
reports he attempted to relay news that he felt was critical
to the public’s welfare but was suppressed in the daily
papers. Seldes wanted the public to be aware that these
forces were polluting the news and he wrote in his original
prospectus of the newsletter:

The viewpoint of Tp_heet is simple: it is in favor

of every idea, movement and organization that is

for what we carelessly call liberalism, democracy

and progress.

Yet, in wartime America, liberalism became associated with
radicalism, and lp_heet, the vehicle of all Seldes’ dreams
of reforming the press, was considered anti-establishment.
The newsletter died in the post-war years and Seldes was

silenced by the mainstream press.

159
CONCLUSIONS

This study has sought to answer why George Henry Seldes
wrote about the events that he did and how those events
influenced his criticisms. Seldes wrote about his
experiences as a reporter and foreign correspondent because
they illustrated his belief that the press was corrupt.

His criticisms of the press were a direct response to his
experiences, which had repeatedly shown him that the press
was negligent in its role as democratic watchdog.

After Seldes left newspaper journalism and began to
document his experiences he began to see reoccurring
patterns of economic and political factors that governed the
press and controlled society. In his criticisms he tried to
expose those powerful, faceless people and organizations who
owned the press and consequently controlled public opinion.
Seldes labelled them "Big Business" and used words like
"Reaction" and "Fascism" to identify his opponents, terms so
nebulous that it is not surprising that he was criticized
for being too general and too unspecific. Essentially,
Seldes tried to convince the public that the press - those
watchdogs of Democracy - were undermining the very values
they professed to uphold.

The mainstream press succeeded in silencing Seldes’
accusations first, by not reviewing his books and second, by
dismissing him as an hysterical extremist. It must be

conceded that Seldes’ aggressive and uncompromising style of

160
criticism and idealistic solutions made it easy for them to
portray him as a radical. Further, what he was saying about
press ethics and social responsibility was unpalatable to a
press that used the First Amendment as an excuse to function

without restraint or interference.‘

Even those that agreed
that the press needed reforms felt that Seldes’ proposed
solutions smacked of control of freedom of speech.

It is undeniable that Seldes’ criticisms of big
business involvement in the press attacked the foundations
of democratic society. Seldes raised questions about
freedom of speech and standards of the press, issues that
were still open to First Amendment interpretation by the
Supreme Court.5 He wanted business regulated in a society
that considered the right to make a profit an integral part
of the constitution. Seldes, by himself, couldn’t destroy
his opponents - big business and reaction - because they
were woven into the very fabric of society and human nature.
The task was made harder because there was no single
identifiable enemy or easy solution, it was the whole
institution that was corrupt.6

When assessing Seldes’ contribution to press criticism
one must speculate on what he hoped to achieve by attacking
those who controlled the press. Realistically he couldn’t
possibly destroy the Hearsts and McCormicks and their huge

press empires. He could not even prosecute these press

lords for starting the First World War or manipulating

161
politics. What he could do, however, was make the public
aware and he believed, in true democratic fashion, that if
enough spoke out then changes would follow. His message was
simple - the press was corrupt and the public should
question everything that they read. He encouraged them to
be eternally vigilant against the forces of reaction.

Others, like Upton Sinclair and I.F. Stone, also
criticized the control of business over newspaper content
and the lack of press freedom, but they voiced it in a much
less vehement manner and focused more upon their newspaper
colleagues than the general public.7 What made Seldes
unique was that he spoke out in spite of the public attacks
and ridicule. He sacrificed his reputation as an objective
journalist to the cause he believed in. Arguably, this was
not a very practical course of action, and one that diluted
the effectiveness of his message. However, by looking at
Seldes’ profile, it would be difficult to imagine that he
would act in any other way. As an idealist, a humanitarian,
and a passionate crusader there could be no half measures
for him. There is Don Quixote quality about him as he
tilted at all the issues he could find.

In discussing Seldes’ contribution to press criticism
it is possible to argue that he contributed nothing of
significance and this is why he had not been acknowledged by
history. Lee Brown thought Seldes was so insignificant that

he barely mentioned him in his book, The Relectapt

162
heteepetiep, a history of press criticism. Brown, in
establishing the significance of a press critic, used a
model of criticism that determined that effective press
criticisms must be "realistic" and "critically positive."
Seldes, with his ideal solutions to the problems of the
press, fulfilled neither of these criteria and could thus be
considered an ineffective critic. Brown further concluded
that press criticism is ineffective if it is motivated "by a
desire to prove something good or bad."8 Since most of
Seldes’ criticisms were designed to show how inadequate the
press was and how much it needed reform, it would suggest
that he failed on this account also.

Seldes may not have been an effective critic according
to the definition supplied by Brown, but he was an
outstanding muckraker. Researcher Harry Stein provided an
operational definition of the term muckraking, which he
described as having six aspects: they work to expose a
hidden situation, they depict the situation prescriptively,
locate the agent of control, suggests a course of action,
incite audience response and maintain authorial autonomy.
All these factors characterized Seldes’ work.9 Stein also
believed that "most muckrakers sought to increase the power
of individuals and to make business and government more
responsive, believing that commercial interests deflected
democratic interests." Stein concluded that the basis of

the muckraking tradition was that it expounded a faith that

163

once the people were presented with the facts this would
lead to action. Stein suggested that muckraking did not end
in 1914 but continued past the progressive era with people
like "George Seldes, Drew Pearson and Ralph Nader."
Researcher Margaret Blanchard agreed, claiming that virulent
press criticism assaulting the "economic structure of
newspaper operations" experienced during the 19305, dated
back to the turn of the century.10

Whether press critic or muckraker, Seldes did raise
issues about the press that were echoed by others. The press
faced a crisis in public credibility during this period and
historian Edwin Emery described this widespread public
disillusionment with the press in his book, The Preeetin

" Critics of the press ranged from President

Americe.
Franklin Roosevelt to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes
to author Sir Norman Angell, who all agreed that there were
major flaws in the press and that there was an amazing
amount of disinformation in the press during the 19405.12
That others agreed with Seldes affords his work a
degree of validity and suggests he was not perhaps as
radical as his critics would have us believe. His
criticisms were further validated when they were duplicated
in the Hutchins Commission 1947 summary report, A Free and
Respopsible geese, which is the definitive work on press
criticisms whose recommendations are still being implemented

13

forty-five years later. The commission promoted the

164
concept of press responsibility and devised ethical
standards to which the press should aspire.“ Both of these
tenants were fundamental to Seldes’ vision of the press.
The existence of the commission indicates that the press
were in a state of crisis and that Seldes’ criticisms were
merely part of a wider societal movement that demanded
reforms in how the press functioned.

While conceding the value of Seldes’ criticisms it
should not be ignored that he was in many ways a flawed
critic. Flaws that were to work against the effectiveness
of his message. He believed passionately in freedom of the
press and, like his father, was not prepared to compromise,
not even moderate critics like Bruce Blixan and Oswald
Garrison Villard, who believed in his principles but
abhorred his methods.

An extension of Seldes’ uncompromising attitude was
his strict requirements for what constituted suppression.
He saw lying and distortion everywhere and he worked out a
test to gauge the accuracy of the news:

If, for example, the newspapers reported that

Lenin had been assassinated in 1917, and again in

1918 and once more in 1919, and 1920 showed the

Bolshevik leaders alive, then obviously the press

of the world had lied, again and again, year after

year.15
This is harsh criteria by any standard. Seldes made no
allowance for the errors made in the accumulation of

information, methods of communication or the restrictions of

space in newspapers. He was also uncompromising in his

165

language and Pamela Brown wrote: "Nor did he pull any
punches. Newspapers were not inaccurate: they lied. The
press did not miss stories: it suppressed them."“

While always ready to accuse the daily papers of
suppression and distortion Seldes, himself, was not above
making errors that could have easily been considered
suppression. For example, he wrote an article in In Fact on
April 27 1942, about labor trouble in the office of the
magazine The hew Republic. Editor of The New Republic,
Bruce Blixan, wrote to Seldes saying:

You accepted as true a statement regarding a

controversy from one of the parties without making

any attempt... to investigate or to hear the case

of either of the two other parties. Such conduct

seems to me a departure from the high standards of

journalism about which you so often talk

publicly.17
Seldes responded that "from my point of view the statement
of a majority of editors ... warranted my publication of the
barest fact mentioned in the editors appeal to me."18 This
was hardly sufficient explanation for failing to get all
sides of the issue, particularly when Blixan had championed
Seldes in an article on the effective functioning of the

w Seldes wrote a retraction but his bias was

press.
evident. He claimed to be completely impartial in his
presentation of the facts but he did favor stories that
reinforced the view that the daily press lied to the public.
In Seldes’ efforts to reveal how corrupt the press was

he employed several methods, some of which were not always

166

completely ethical. He devised a plan to find out whether
daily newspapers were indulging in suppression. He sent a
letter to the editor of the hew Tork Times, Edwin James, on
the letterhead of another organization and signed a
fictitious name. When the hTT failed to publish the letter,
Seldes wrote to James telling him what he was doing and
accusing the hTT of distortion and suppression. James wrote
back, "I trust in the future we will be able to avoid giving
space to the fabrications you intimate you intend to keep
coming."m’ Through actions like this Seldes may well have
destroyed his own credibility with other journalists. The
likelihood that Seldes was treated as a joke by some of his
peers is reinforced by another letter from James to Seldes,
which read: "Did you read what the head of the union said
about the Gimbel strike when it was all over? I did not
notice anything about it in lp Tact. What suppression!"21

Although treated lightly by some of his peers, Seldes
appears to have been taken seriously by some of his
subscribers who would ask him to investigate people or
organizations. Seldes claimed that he had a circulation of
176,000, a figure that is unsubstantiated because Tn Fact is
not listed in either hleich’s Guide to Peeiodicals or Ayer’s
D ws . The circulation figure of In Eact
implies a great deal of support, since it was twice the

circulation of W or mm, but as Frank

Mott insinuated, many of the subscribers may have been

167
"dragooned" because they received the newsletter along other
labor periodicals. Despite this, Seldes continued to insist
that he had support.

Seldes, although reliant upon this support, wasn’t
above exploiting it to further his own cause. For example,
he wrote an article in In Fact about his colleague, Lawrence
Fernsworth, who was a hew York Times correspondent unhappy
with the Tipee because he felt his work was suppressed.
Apparently after the article appeared Fernsworth wrote to
Seldes saying that he resented references to a quarrel
between himself and the hTT in the pages of lp__Eeet.22
Fernsworth objected to being portrayed as a disgruntled
worker and he claimed that the hTT printed almost all his
pieces on the Spanish Civil War. "I can’t see what end is
severed by mixing my name up in any further discussions
about the hTT and hope it will not be done."

The criticisms of Seldes’ method of protest are valid.
He was frequently shrill, repetitive and aggressive. He was
sensitive to criticism of his own work, and among his
private papers were copies of letters responding
individually to his critics. Seldes also damned his critics
publicly in a 1954 article in which he insisted that
newspapers across the country were refusing to review his
books.‘23 This anxiousness to defend his position made his
criticisms sometimes seem belligerent, defensive and they

raise questions about whether he was really suppressed or

168
just felt that he didn’t receive the coverage that he felt
he deserved.

Seldes also lacked balance in his criticisms,
concentrating on only the negative aspects of the press. He
made sweeping generalizations, and stylistically his work
was blunt, sensational and often badly written, an
observation reinforced by researcher Pamela Brown who found
Seldes’ language "simple and colorful" and concluded that he
did not "produce copy of literary merit."“

Seldes alienated support through this manner of
protest, yet he never attempted to change or modify his
method of criticism. He chose to wage his battle against
the press in an extreme, almost anti-intellectual manner
because not only did he believe that there never could be
any compromise with press corruption of Fascism, but he also
wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible. He wanted
to reach the workers, not just other journalists or the
intellectuals who read liberal magazines, because he
believed that change would come from the people. In this
respect he was perhaps a radical. He didn’t mind if he
alienated others. All that mattered was that he drew
attention to issues and through his sacrifice, heighten
public awareness and force action.

This method of protest may have been short-sighted in
terms of the effective dissemination of his message to his

peers, and those within the press system. Yet, who is to

169
say that Seldes tireless, aggressive approach to criticism
did not directly influence members of the Hutchins
Commission. Seldes uncompromising attitude to protest
indicates an extraordinary level of commitment to his belief
that the daily press was misinforming the public and that
the public armed with the knowledge of press corruption was
capable of making changes.

This study, by examining Seldes’ experiences and
criticisms, has sought to understand the roots of his
criticisms and why he protested in the manner in which he
did. It has attempted to integrate his experiences and his
criticisms and show that Seldes’ life of protest was the
culmination of both his childhood values and his experiences
as a journalist. Elements combined from both, to produce an
uncompromising and committed critic who never stopped
believing in a free and responsible press. Driven by his
idealism, his humanitarianism, and perhaps his need to prove
himself, he remained steadfast in his criticisms even though
his work was ridiculed. He continued because he really felt
that he was echoing the sentiments of a significant portion
of the public.

Seldes did not receive official recognition of his
contribution to press criticism until 1980.25 Other outcast
critics like Will Irwin and Upton Sinclair were restored to
grace earlier, but not Seldes. Why Seldes was treated in

this manner deserves further consideration as does the issue

170
of whether Seldes was a truly effective critic. Perhaps a
key to understanding Seldes’ treatment by the mainstream
press is found in Altschull’s theory of press criticism,
which concluded that "Dissent is permitted ... just as long
as it does not go beyond the parameters of acceptable

"u. Seldes’ criticisms did go beyond what was

idealogy.
deemed acceptable in the 19305 and 19405, and he spoke out
when few others would, sacrificing career and credibility.
But it was these traits that made him into a persistent,
annoying gadfly whose bites at the established press helped

raise public consciousness of press practices and thus

assisted in creating a climate conducive to press reform.

171

NOTES -- CHAPTER 10

1. George Seldes, Witpeee te e Centuey (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1987), xxi.

2. George Seldes, The Facts Are (New York: In Fact Inc.,
1942), 25.

3. Prospectus of lp Fact.

4. Margaret Blanchard, "Press Criticism and National
Reform Movements: The Progressive Era and the New Deal,"

Journelisp histoey (Summer 197): 3.
5. Ibid.

6. Herbert Altschull, Agepte_et_£eyee (New York: Longman
Inc., 1984), 12. Seldes criticized during a time when the
press were in the pay of big business, a historical
phenomena examined by historian Herbert Altshcull who wrote
that the press during the 19305 and 19405 were powerful,
profitable and reactionary. He observed that business-like
media monopolies had begun to dominate the ties between
business and the press. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) had sought to
regulate industry, including newspapers. Publishers
protested at what they considered government control of a
free press and aligned themselves with big business
interests to oppose reforms and increasingly pushed an anti-
labor, pro—big business line in their newspapers.

7. A study by the author indicates that both The Nation
and The hew Republic covered many of the same topics during
the Second World War. also:

Bruce Bliven, "Balance Sheet of Journalism," The New
Republie 10 March 1941, 331-334. Bliven listed several
complaints against the press that were similar to Seldes
criticisms: one, censorship by the publisher is worse than
that by advertisers, newspapers are edited by Business men 3
Monopoly is a grave danger to the press, 4 There is a
dangerous tendency toward standardization and syndicated
material. 5 the middle class is overrepresented in the
press. 6. Journalists and papers get old fat and timid.
Seldes was not alone in warning the American people about
the threat of fascism during the 19305. Heywood Broun
wrote an article for the hey_hepehlie (Sept 28, 1938 p.211)

172

attacking a young writer named Vrest Orton who wrote in his
column "The Return of the Native" that while fascism is a
current menace to America "communism was not in the national
picture at the moment and constituted " no danger
whatsoever.”

8. Lee Brown. Ibe_Belgstant_Bef2rmatien (New York: David
McKay Company, Inc.,), 19.

9. Harry Stein, "American Muckraking of Technology Since

1900," Jouepaliep Quarteely (Summer 1990): 401-402.
10. Blanchard, 2.

11. Edwin Emery, The Press ip Aperica, 3rd, ed., (New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1972), 571.

12. George Seldes, The Eeople Qop’t Know (New York: Gaer
Associates, 1949), 2-3. According to Seldes author Sir

Norman Angell wrote in an article in The New Republic, 21
June 1941 "with out vast and complicated paraphanalia of
making things known ... the world somehow manages to miss
just the news that is often of the most vital significance."
Seldes also quoted Franklin Roosevelt as saying at one of
his press conferences "An amazing state of public
misinformation exists in the United States."

13. Blanchard, 1.

14. Ibid., 11.

15. George Seldes, Tell the Teeth and Run (New York:
Greenburg Publisher, 1953), 242.

16. Pamela Brown, "George Seldes and the Winter Soldier
Brigade: Press Criticism of ln Fact, 1940-1950," American

Journalisp vol vi (1989): 86.

17. Bruce Blixan, editor of The hew hepublic to George
Seldes 1 May 1942.

18. George Seldes to Bruce Blixan 6 May 1942. Special
Collection, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.

19. Bruce Blixan, "Balance Sheet of American Journalism,"
The hey hepehlie, 10 March 1941, 331-334. One of the few
articles that alluded to Seldes’ importance as a press
critic was in The_hey_hepehlie, which suggested that
although the sharp criticism of men like Upton Sinclair and
George Seldes had been repudiated by American Journalism "it
had then proceeded to remedy at least some of the faults

173
charged, whose existence is denied."
20. George Seldes to Edwin James, 1 February 1944.
21. Edwin James 26 September 1941.

22. Lawrence Fernsworth to George Seldes, 16 September
1941, Special Collections, Philadelphia.

23. George Seldes, "Non-Conspiracy of Silence in the
Press," hepeee February 1954, 3.

24. Brown, 86.

25. George Seldes was selected by the Qualitative Studies
Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication to received its second annual award for
professional excellence. The honor was presented to Seldes
at the AEJMC convention in Boston August 1980. Several
magazine articles throughout the 19705 and 19805 also
applauded Seldes’ role in the development of consumer
advocacy and investigative journalism. Communication
Researcher Carl Jensen wrote: "Lincoln Steffens, the golden
muckraker, inspired George Seldes, who, in turn, inspired
I.F. Stone, in turn inspired Carl Bernstein, who, along with
Bob Woodward, inspired a generation of investigative
journalists." Columnist, Colman McCarthy, also acknowledged
Seldes’ contribution to press criticisms in his "Thinkers
and Their Thoughts" column in the Washingtop Poet May 3,
1973. He wrote that Seldes "produced a large body of
literature that is among our most insightful press
criticism." Journalist, Nat Hentoff concluded in the Village
Voice March 29 1973 that Seldes had been "grossly neglected"
by history. He wrote: "Leibling was the better stylist, to
be sure, but Seldes, like I.F. Stone got into much more
controversial areas than Leibling and was more involved in
the muckraking tradition of journalism." Derek Norcross
wrote in his article in Eeeeee_hegeeipe on the 18 November
1973 pioneered the field cf consumer news.

26. Herbert Altschull, Agents ot Power (New York: Longman
Inc., 1984), 272.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1

List of George Seldes’ Books
in Chronological Order
You Can’t Print That........Payson and Clark ....... ...1929
Can These Things Be.........Brewer and Warren.. ...... .1931
World Panorama..............Little, Brown & Co........1933

The Vatican: Yesterday
Today - Tomorrow............Harper & Bros.............1934

Iron, Blood & Profits.......Harper & Bros.............1934
Sawdust Caesar..............Harper & Bros ....... ......1935
Freedom of the Press........Bobbs Merrill.............1935
Lords of the Press..........Messner......... ..... .....1938
You Can’t Do That... ....... .Modern Age. .............. .1938
The Catholic Crisis.........Messner...................1940
Witch Hunt..................Modern Age................1940
The Facts Are...............In Fact... ...... .. ....... .1942
Facts and Facism............In Fact.......... ........ .1943
One Thousand Americans......Boni & Gaer...............1947
The People Don’t Know.......Gaer Associates...........1949
Tell the Truth and Run. ..... Greenberg.. ....... .. ...... 1953
The Great Quotations..................................1965
Never Tire of Protesting....Lyle Stuart...............1968

Even the Gods Can’t Change History.....Lyle Stuart....1976

174

 

The Great Thoughts..................... ...............

Witness to A Century.. ....... Ballantine ....... . ...... 1987

175

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Altschull, Herbert. Agents 0; Power. New York: Longman Inc.,
1984.

Brown, Lee. The heluctept Reformation. New York: David McKay
Company, Inc., 1974.

Crozier, Emmet. Apeeicap Reporters on the Weetern Front. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Emery, Edwin. The Press in America. New Jersey: Prentice-
Hall Inc., 1972.

Gringrich, Arnold. hethipg But People. New York: Crown
Publishers, Inc., 1971.

Seldes, George. hitpese to a Century. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1987.

. Can These Things Be. New York: Brewer and Warren,
1931.

. Freedom of the Preee. New York: Garden City
Publishing Company, Inc., 1937.

. Tell the Truth and Run. New York: Greenburg
Publisher, 1953.

. Toe ert Eeint That. New York: Payson and Clarke
Ltd.,1929.

. Tee Cen’t Do That. New York: Modern Age Books
Inc., 1938.

. orld heporama 1918-1935. New York: Blue Ribbon
Books, 1933. '

. Leege e: the Beess. New York: Blue Ribbon Books,
1941.

176

177

. heyeeet_eeeeee. New York: Harper and Brothers
Publishers, 1935.

. The_£eeple_erLt_hpey. New York: Gaer Associates,
1949.

. hyep the Gods Can’t Change Histoey. New Jersey:
Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1976.

- Qne_Thgusand_Ameriean§. New York: Boni and Gaer.
1947.

. The Vatican: Testeeeay - Todey - Tomerrow. New
York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1934.

- Nexer_Tire_ef_£rotesting. New York: Lyle Stuart
Inc., 1968.

. Ir2n1_E122d_and_£rofit_- New York: Harper and
Brothers Publishers, 1934.

. Eeete epe Eescism. New York: In Fact, 1943.
. The Facte Are. New York: In Fact, 1942.

Stein, M.L. Under Fire. New York: Julian Messner, 1968.

Journals

Blanchard, Margaret A. "The Hutchins Commission, The Press
and the Responsibility Concept." Journalism Monographs
49 (May 1977):1-59

Brown, Pamela. "George Seldes and the Winter Soldier
Brigade: The Press Criticism of In Fact, 1940-1950."

Americep Jouepelisp Vol. VI, no. 2 (1989): 85-102.

Dennis, Everette E., and Claude-Jean Bertrand. "Seldes at
90: They Don’t Give Pulitzers for that Kind of
Criticism." Journelism Histoey 7 (Autumn-Winter 1980):
81-86.

Stein, Harry. "The Muckraking Book in America, 1946-1973."
Journa sm rter (Summer 1975):297-303.

. "American Muckraking of Technology Since

1900." Jeeepeliep_Qeeeteely 67 (Summer 1990): 401-409.

Woltman, Frederick. "The Camouflaged Communist Press."
Americen heecuey 57 (November 1943): 578-587.

178

Magazines

Balf, Todd. "A Reporter’s Reprise." Yankee, May 1987, 100-
104, 134- 135.

Blanshard, Paul. "Battling For A Free Press, The Saga of
George Seldes, Journalistic Muckraker." The Churchman,
February 1977, 11-12.

Bliven, Bruce. "Balance Sheet of American Journalism." The

hey_hepehlie, 10 March 1941, 331-334.

Jenson, Carl. "Three Cheers for George Seldes." The Quill,
September 1987, 15-18.

Kirchwey, Freda. "Keep Cool on Labor." The_hetiep, 21 June
1941, 713.

Norcross, Derek. "George Seldes - Visit With an Oldtime
Muckraker." Eeeeee, 18 November 1973, 7.

Ravitch, Sylvia. "George... The Anti-Fascist." News Storv,
May 1945, 23-25.

Reed, Susan. "Eyewitness to an Era." Beople Weekly 24,
30 September 1985, 75-79.

Shearer, Derek. "George Seldes: Muckraker Emeritus."
heppeete 12, August-September 1973, 16—20.

Stone, I.F. "All Out Against Labor." The Nation, 28 March
1942, 360.

. "Esso Family Reunion." The Nation, 12 June 1943,
826.

Straight, Michael. "Standard Oil:Axis Ally." The New
Republie, 6 April 1942, 450.

The Nation, 9 May 1942, 530.
Walljasper, Jay. "George Seldes, Grandfather of the

Alternative Press." htpe headee, July-August 1989, 142-
143.

Newspapers

Dudar, Helen. "A Gadfly’s Guide to the 20th Century." The

179

Wall St. Jeeepal, 14 May 1985, 26.

Hentoff, Nat. "The Father of Some of Us All." The Village
Veice (March 1973): 27-28.

Hills, Brad. "Valley Profile - George Seldes." The Lebanon
Yalle_NeE§. 21 August 1971. 1-

McCarthy, Colman. "Seeking a Free Press." Washington Post, 3
May 1973, A26.

Mehren, Elizabeth. "George Seldes at 94: A Living Panorama
of World History." L.A, Times, 12 June 1985, Part V, 1.

Seldes, George. "The New Gadflys." The New York Timee 18
September 1947, 39.

Chica 0 Tribune, 28 July 1925.
Manchester G d' , 1 August 1925.
Chicago Tribene, (Paris) 29 July 1925.
London Dail News, 25 July 1925.

New York World, 29 July 1925.

hew Yorh Obseeyee, 12 June 1929.
New Yoeh hyepipg Beet, 13 February 1929.

The Pilet, 3 February 1939.

Unpublished Material

Blixan, Bruce, to George Seldes, 1 May 1942. Special
Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Bolton, Laetitia, to George Seldes, 9 May 1938. Special
Collections.

Fernsworth, Lawrence, to George Seldes, 16 September 1941.
Special Collections.

Fordham, Helen. "George Seldes and the Left Wing Press."
Class Paper, Michigan State University, 1991.

Gilman, Mildred to George Seldes, 23 October 1952. Special
Collections.

Ickes, Harold, to George Seldes, 16 November 1950. Special
Collections.

James, Edwin, to George Seldes, 26 September 1941. Special
Collections.

180

James, Edwin, to George Seldes, 1 February 1944. Special
Collections.

Joseph, Nannine 29 July 1942 and 14 January 1954. Special
Collections.

Knight, Francis, to George Seldes 2 August 1956. Special
Collections.

O’Sheel, Shaemas, to George Seldes, Christmas 1952. Special
Collections.

Reiser, Milton to George Seldes, 10 March 1954. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to David Sterns, hew Teeh host. Mail
Dispatch entitled "In Spain: A War to make New Wars."
(Undated) Special Collections.

Seldes, George, to David Sterns, hey Teek Post. Mail
Dispatch entitled "Kill Men in Overalls, Spare Men with
Collars, Fascist Plan in Madrid." (Undated) Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to David Sterns, New York Poet. Mail
Dispatch entitled "World War Postponed Two Years Due to
Fascist Defeat in Spain." (21 April 1937) Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Tim W. 28 November 1957. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Tim W. 20 December 1957. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Arnold Gringrich, 18 January 1938.
Special Collections.

Smart, David, to George Seldes, 24 March 1938. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to David Smart, 26 March 1938. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Arnold Gringrich, 5 May 1938. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Carlos Baker, 28 November 1961. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Bruce Blixan, 6 May 1942. Special
Collections.

181

Seldes, George, Judith Radorf, 22 September 1926. Special
Collections.

Seldes, George, to Meyer Field, October 17 1950. Special
Collections.

Sevareid, Eric, to George Seldes, 5 August 1947. Special
Collections.

Sinclair, Upton, to George Seldes, 2 May 1945 and August
1945. Special Collections.

The Bulletip e: The heegee of Americep Writersl INC. Jan
1940, Vol VII, No. 3

Truman, Harry, to George Seldes, 27 April 1940. Special
Collections.

Uris, Leon, to George Seldes, 10 November 1953 and 16
November 1953. Special Collections.

Copy of testimonial made by Richard Bransten alias Bruce
Minton on September 15 1953. Special Collections.

 

Newsletters
S ace n - W e ws t dvertisi , 4 April
1938.
In Fact: Newe They Wep’t Beipt Prospectus for George Seldes’
newsletter.
Thesis

Williams, Helen Jean. "An Evaluation of Criticisms of the
Daily Press in George Seldes’ 1p ha t." M.A. Thesis,
University of Minnesota, 1947.

Reviews

Frank Luther Mott. Review of The_heete_hee, by George

Seldes. In Jouepeliep Qeaeteely 20 (December 1943):
335-336.

Frank Luther Mott. Review of l,000 Ameeicans, by George

Seldes. In hey Teeh herale Teihepe Weekly heoh (7 March
1948)

182

James Boylan. Review of hitpess to e Centuey, by George
Seldes. In Qelephie Jeeepaliep Review (May-June 1987):

62.

Harold Norman Denny. Review of Tee eep’t Beipt Thet, by
George Seldes. In The hew Republic (May 1929): 310-
311.

W.L. White. Review of Leeds of the Press, by George Seldes.
In The_hey_hepehlie (November 1938): 107.

George L. Bird. Review of Ope Thousand Americans, by George

Seldes. In Jeeepeliep_Qeeeteely 25 (June 1948): 176-
177.

Eric Allen. Review of Leeee_et_the_£eeee, by George Seldes.
In Jeeepelism Quarterly 16 (June 1939): 178-179.

Kenneth Olson. Review of heeeeop of the Peess, by George

Seldes. In Journalism Quarterly 12 (September 1935):
319-321.

Charles E. Rogers. Review of Eects ape Fascism, by George
Seldes. In Jouepalism Qearterly 21 (March 1944): 68-70.

O.W. Reigal. Review of Tee eep’t Do That, by George Seldes.
In Jouepelism Quarteely 15 (September 1938): 298-299.

Review of Lerde et the Press, by George Seldes Daily Worker,
25 November 1938.

David Stern. "Facts of Life for Newspaper Readers." New York
host, 22 November 1938.

Lewis Gannett. Review of l,090 American, by George Seldes.
In Ney Toeh Herald Tribune, 15 January 1948.

Gilbert Seldes. Review of World Panorama, by George Seldes.
In hew Teeh Eyepipg Joeenal, 10 June 1933.

Articles by George Seldes

Seldes, George. "Columnists: From Left to Right."
Progressixe_fleeklx. 21 January 1939. 82.1-7.

. "Fascism in Italy," Liherty, 19 September 1925,
15.

183
. "No More Glory."

. "Non-Conspiracy of Silence in the Press."Expose,
February 1954, 3-4.

. " ‘Ken’ — The Inside Story," The Nation, 30 April
1938, 497-500.

. "Roy Howard," The hew Republic, 27 July 1938, 322-
325.

. "Treason on The Times," The New Republic, 7
September 1938, 121-124.

. "American Writers Choose Sides," Sunday Worker, 22
September 1940.

. "Spain: Fascism Gone Gray," The Nation, 3 August
1970, 77-79.

       

HICHI

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