[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 114 (Friday, July 14, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10075-S10076]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             GEORGE SELDES

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, George Seldes, who died Sunday in Vermont 
at the age of 104, was literally, a Witness to a Century--the title of 
his autobiography.
  A true investigative reporter who refused to accept the subtle 
pressures imposed upon journalists by publishers, editors, and 
advertisers--he was uncompromising in reporting what he saw and heard, 
and printed those observations in his own independent publication--In 
Fact.
  Izzy Stone called Seldes the ``granddaddy'' of investigative 
reporters--high 

[[Page S10076]]
praise from another great independent journalist of our century.
  My visits and frequent correspondence with George rank among the 
highlights of my Senate career. He never intruded, but did on occasion 
offer some very good advice to this senator--and most times, I was 
smart enough to recognize good counsel when I heard it. I had the great 
pleasure of joining him at his 100th birthday party in Vermont--an 
event that became a public celebration of his life.
  Here was a man who interviewed William Jennings Bryan, Theodore 
Roosevelt, Eddie Rickenbacker, Generals Pershing, Patton, and 
MacArthur; a personal observer of Lenin and Mussolini and a confidant 
of Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis.
  One of the great lives of our century has passed--but George Seldes 
left behind a recorded history to guide our understanding of the 
turbulent time.
  I attach an editorial that appeared in the July 8, 1995 edition of 
The Burlington Free Press, and a column written by Colman McCarthy that 
appeared in the July 11 edition of The Washington Post.
  They capture the spirit and dogged pursuit of truth that marked 
George Seldes' lasting contribution to journalism and the history of 
our age. I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:
             [From the Burlington Free Press, July 8, 1995]

                            A Contrary Voice

       George Seldes, who died Sunday at 104, was a journalist and 
     harsh critic of mainstream journalists who might be best 
     remembered by Vermont newspaper editors and reporters from an 
     appearance before the Vermont and New Hampshire Press 
     Associations in the late 1980s.
       Except for a slowed step and a bit of a stoop, nothing in 
     Seldes' appearance betrayed his exceptional age, nor hints of 
     any mellowing on matters he found important--beginning and 
     invariably ending with a journalist's responsibility to tell 
     it straight.
       What bothered this long-time resident of Hartland Four 
     Corners most during his 86 years of covering historic events 
     was not so much what got into newspapers of his day but what 
     didn't--especially immediately preceding and following World 
     War II. Errors of omission.
       It was a time when some journalists doubled as government 
     informers for U.S. intelligence agencies as a gesture of 
     patriotism; when the Washington Press Corps kept many elected 
     officials' personal foibles and peccadillos a secret; and 
     powerful publishers ran newspapers more like personal 
     fiefdoms in pursuit of selective causes than purveyors of the 
     larger truth.
       Like I.F. Stone, Seldes figured if mainstream newspapers 
     wouldn't print what he wrote for fear of riling advertisers 
     or powerful news sources, he would print it in his own 
     publication. In Fact, it was called, and it took on, among 
     many powerful interests, the tobacco industry and its ability 
     to keep damaging health data out of newspapers--a 
     consequence, Seldes was never shy about charging, or 
     newspapers' heavy reliance on cigarette advertising.
       In some cases, he was acting on tips from mainstream 
     reporters who knew their own papers would never print what 
     they'd dug up. They would leak the news to Seldes who would 
     print it. In other cases, In Fact became a more reliable 
     source of news for mainstream newspapers than their own 
     sources--the ultimate flattery for any newspaper person, and 
     ultimate indictment of those who missed the news.
       In his later years, Seldes was always careful to note 
     improvements in the objectivity of today's newspapers--while 
     holding firm to the belief that when newspapers forget their 
     responsibility to truth, they risk retreat into those bad old 
     days.
       Nor was his burr-under-the-saddle style without fault--his 
     muckraking, make-waves narrowness of vision caused him to 
     miss some of the bigger picture, too; a heavy dose of Seldes 
     at this prime could be hard for any average reader with 
     broader interests to take.
       What seemed most striking about his comments at that 
     appearance in Hanover, N.H. however--just as it does now--is 
     the diminished capacity of contrary voices like his to be 
     heard today in the din of the modern information age.
       Today, so many loud, contrary voices compete for listeners' 
     ears, with so many public outlets for spreading their views, 
     the problem is no longer an absence of facts, in some cases 
     it's too many facts--and too few people taking the time to 
     make sense of them.
       More big-picture wisdom and few disconnected facts in every 
     type of media today would go a long way--a need that's grown 
     wider with George Seldes' passing.
                                                                    ____

               [From the Washington Post, July 11, 1995]

                   George Seldes: Giant of Journalism

                          (By Colman McCarthy)

       As a traveling companion, George Seldes didn't believe in 
     letting you rest. In the spring of 1982 when he was 91 and in 
     New York to collect a George Polk Award for a lifetime of 
     contribution to journalism, I took the Fifth Avenue bus with 
     him for a 30-block ride between the ceremony and his nephew's 
     apartment. We would have taken a cab but he preferred the 
     bus: a better way to get the feel of the city and its people.
       Along the jostling way, Seldes threw at me a half-dozen 
     story ideas, mingled with sidebars of his opinions, plus 
     advice on how not merely to gather facts but to cull the 
     useless from the useful, and then a string of mirthful 
     recollections from his newspapering days going back eight 
     decades. If we were the boys on the bus, George Seldes was 
     some boy.
       He died on July 2, in his 104th year and only a half-decade 
     or so after retiring from a reporting career that began in 
     1909 with the Pittsburgh Leader.
       It's well within the bounds of accuracy to say of Seldes--
     and this isn't the kind of gassy praise that's the customary 
     sendoff for the deceased--that for much of the 20th century 
     he stood as a giant and a pilar of journalism, a reporter's 
     reporter. He had the subverse notion that investigating the 
     press--the money-saving schemings of the publishers of his 
     day, editors cowering before advertisers, reporters 
     fraternizing with the pashas they write about--should be as 
     vital a beat as skeptically covering politicians.
       At the Polk ceremony, the citation of the awards committee 
     succinctly summarized the spirit of intellectual independence 
     Seldes committed himself to: ``By mutual agreement, George 
     Seldes belonged not to the journalism establishment, nor was 
     he tethered to any political philosophy. With a gimlet eye 
     ever fixed upon transgressors, he soared above the 
     conventions of his time--a lone eagle, unafraid and 
     indestructible. He is 91 now and still a pretty tough bird.''
       Seldes lived in Hartland Four Corners, Vt. Until recently, 
     he was self-sufficient at home and ever delighted to receive 
     such pilgrims as Ralph Nader, Morton Mintz and Rick 
     Goldsmith, a California filmmaker who is completing a 
     documentary on Seldes's life. The film will include 
     references to I.F. Stone, who credited Seldes' newsletter 
     ``In Fact''--which had 176,000 subscribers for a time in the 
     1940's--as the model for his own carefully researched I.F. 
     Stone's Weekly.''
       The titles of some of Seldes's books give a hint of the 
     fires that burned within him: ``You Can't Print That: The 
     Truth Behind the News'' (1928). ``Never Tire of Protesting'' 
     (1986), ``Tell the Truth and Run'' (1953), ``Lords of the 
     Press'' (1935). In the 1980s, he wrote his memoir ``Witness 
     to a Century'' and edited ``The Great Thoughts,'' the latter 
     a thick and rich collection of ideas Seldes had gathered 
     throughout a lifetime of reading and listening.
       ``Sometimes in isolated phrase or paragraph,'' he said of 
     his selections from Abelard to Zwingli and from Ability to 
     Zen, ``will work on the reader's imagination more forcefully 
     than it might when buried in a possibly difficult text. Each 
     time a quotation in this book makes a reader think in a new 
     way, I shall have achieved my aim.''
       As a reporter and press critic, Seldes was more than an 
     iconoclastic outsider, as worthy and rare as that calling is. 
     His news-gathering and analysis were ethics-based. Omitting 
     the news is as vile a sin as slanting the news, he believed. 
     Too many papers avoid stories that might upset the powerful 
     or the majority, while printing news on safe subjects and 
     editorializing to bloodless conclusions.
       In ``freedom of the Press,'' Seldes recalled how he was 
     compromised while covering World War I: ``The journals back 
     home that printed our stories boasted that their 
     correspondents had been at the fighting front. I now realize 
     that we were told tonight but buncombe, that we were shown 
     nothing of the realities of the war, that we were, in short, 
     merely part of the Allied propaganda machine whose purpose 
     was to sustain morale at all costs and help drag unwilling 
     America into the slaughter. . . We all more or less lied 
     about the war.''
       If so, that was to be the last time Seldes shied from 
     getting the whole story. For the rest of his long life, his 
     reporting on what were often no-no subjects--workers' rights, 
     public health and safety, press sellouts, corporate and 
     government lies--was the essence of truth-telling. Like his 
     life, the telling had fullness.
     

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