George
Seldes was born in Alliance, New Jersey, on 16th November, 1890. When
he was nineteen he was employed as a cub reporter by the Pittsburgh
Leader.
In 1914 he was appointed night editor of the Pittsburgh
Post.
As a young man he was influenced by the investigative
journalism of Lincoln Steffens.
In 1916 Seldes moved to London where he
worked for the United Press. When the United
States joined the First World War in 1917,
Seldes was sent to France where he worked as the war correspondent
for the Marshall Syndicate. At end of the war he managed to obtain
an exclusive interview with Paul von Hindenburg.
Unfortunately for Seldes, the article was suppressed and never appeared
in the American press.
Seldes spent the next ten years as an international reporter for the
Chicago
Tribune.
This included an interview with Lenin in
1922. However, the Soviet government did not like Seldes's reports
and in 1923 he was expelled from the country.
The editor of the Chicago
Tribune
sent him to Italy where he wrote about
Benito Mussolini and the rise of fascism.
Seldes investigated the murder of Giacomo
Matteotti, the head of the Italian Socialist Party.
His article implicating Mussolini in the killing, resulted in Seldes
being expelled from Italy.
The Chicago
Tribune
sent Seldes to Mexico in 1927 but his articles criticizing
American corporations concerning their use of the country's mineral
rights, were not always published by the newspaper. Seldes returned
to Europe but found that increasingly his work was being censored
to fit the political views of the newspaper's owner, Robert
McCormack.
Disillusioned, Seldes left the Chicago
Tribune and worked as a freelance writer. In his
first two books, You
Can't Print That!
(1929) and Can
These Thins Be!
(1931), Seldes included material that he had not been allowed to publish
in the Chicago Tribune.
His next book, World
Panorama
(1933), was a narrative history of the period that followed the First
World War.
In 1934 Seldes published a history of the Catholic
Church, The
Vatican.
This was followed by an expose of the world armaments industry, Iron,
Blood and Profits
(1934), an account of Benito Mussolini,
Sawdust
Caesar
(1935), and two books on the newspaper industry, Freedom
of the Press
(1935) and Lords
of the Press
(1938). During this period he also reported on the Spanish
Civil War for the New
York Post.
On his return to the United States in 1940 Seldes published Witch
Hunt,
an account of the persecution of people with left-wing political views
in America, and The
Catholic Crisis,
where he attempted to show the close relationship between the Catholic
Church and fascist organizations in Europe.
In 1940 Seldes began his own political newsletter called In
Fact. A journal that eventually reached a circulation of 176,000.
One of the first articles published in the newsletter concerned the
link between cigarette smoking and cancer. Seldes later explained
that at the time, "The tobacco stories were suppressed by every
major newspaper. For ten years we pounded on tobacco as being one
of the only legal poisons you could buy in America."
As well as writing his newsletter Seldes continued to publish books.
This included Facts
and Fascism
(1943), 1000
Americans
(1947), an account of the people who controlled America and The
People Don't Know
(1949) on the origins of the Cold War.
In the early 1950s Seldes work came under attack from Joseph
McCarthy. Despite his long history of being hostile to all forms
of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, he was accused of being a
communist. He later recalled how: "Newspaper columnists would
write that a Russian agent stopped by my office each week to pay my
salary. I didn't have the money to sue them for libel. My lawyer told
me it would take years to reach a settlement and even if I won I would
never see a dime."
Seles
was blacklisted and now found it difficult
to get his journalism published. He continued to write books including
Tell
the Truth and Run
(1953), Never
Tire of Protesting
(1968), Even
the Gods Can't Change History
(1976) and Witness
to a Century
(1987). George
Seldes
died on 2nd July, 1995, aged 104.
Joe McCarthy: "I have here in
my hand"
Herbert Block, Washington Post
(7th May, 1954)
(1)
George Seldes, interviewed Paul
von Hindenburg
at the end of the First
World War. It was censored at the time but appeared in his book
You Can't Print That! (1929)
We
were doing almost all the fighting while the Allies were marching
unhindered into famous cities and famous battle fields of 1914, and
capturing the headlines of the world. We were losing men and taking
prisoners and trenches - fighting most of the war then and getting
no credit from the press because our work was not spectacular. Hindenburg
and Pershing knew what we were doing. What would Hindenburg say?
"I
will reply with the same frankness," said Hindenburg, faintly
amused at our diplomacy. " The American infantry in the Argonne
won the war."
He paused
and we sat thrilled.
"
I say this," continued Hindenburg, " as a soldier, and soldiers
will understand me best.
"To
begin with I must confess that Germany could not have won the war
- that is, after 1917. We might have won on land. We might have taken
Paris. But after the failure of the world food crops of 1916 the British
food blockade reached
its greatest effectiveness in 1917. So I must really say that the
British food blockade of 1917 and the American blow in the Argonne
of 1918 decided the war for the Allies.
"But without American
troops against us and despite a food blockade which was undermining
the civilian population of Germany and curtailing the rations in the
field, we could still have had a peace without victory. The war could
have ended in a sort of stalemate.
"In the summer of
1918 the German army was able to launch offensive after offensive
- almost one a month. We had the men, the munitions and the morale,
and we were not overbalanced. But the balance was broken by the American
troops.
"The Argonne battle
was slow and difficult. But it was strategic. It was bitter and it
used up division after division. We had to hold the Metz-Longuyon
roads and railroad and we had hoped to stop all American attacks until
the entire army was out of northern France. We were passing through
the neck of a vast bottle. But the neck was narrow. German and American
divisions fought each other to a standstill in the Argonne.
They met and shattered each other's strength. The Americans
are splendid soldiers. But when I replaced a division it
was weak in numbers and unrested, while each American division
came in fresh and fit and on the offensive.
"The day came when
the American command sent new divisions into the battle and when I
had not even a broken division to plug up the gaps. There was nothing
left to do but ask terms.
(2)
George Seldes, Witness to a Century (1987)
If the Hindenburg interview had been passed by Pershing's (stupid)
censors at the time, it would have been headlined in every country
civilized enough to have newspapers and undoubtedly would have made
an impression on millions of people and became an important page in
history. I believe it would have destroyed the main planks on which
Hitler rose to power, it would have prevented World War II, the greatest
and worst war in all history, and it would have changed the future
of all mankind.
(3)
George Seldes
wrote about Benito
Mussolini in
his book You Can't Print That! (1929)
He began
coldly, in a voice northern and unimpassioned. I had never heard an
Italian orator so restrained. Then he changed, became soft and warm,
added gestures, and flames in his eyes. The audience moved with him.
He held them. Suddenly he lowered his voice to a heavy whisper and
the silence among the listeners became more intense. The whisper sank
lower and the listeners strained breathlessly to hear. Then Mussolini
exploded with thunder and fire, and the mob - for it was no more than
a mob now - rose to its feet and shouted. Immediately Mussolini became
cold and nordic and restrained again and swept his mob into its seats
exhausted. An actor. Actor extraordinary, with a country for a stage,
a great powerful histrionic ego, swaying an audience of millions,
confounding the world by his theatrical cleverness.
(4)
George Seldes, interviewed by Randolph T.
Holhut (1992)
Everyone had copies of the confessions of the men who killed Giacomo
Matteotti (the head of the Italian Socialist Party and Mussolini's
chief political rival). The documents clearly implicated Mussolini
in the killing, but not one person wanted to write about it. They
thought Rome was too nice a posting to give up to risk publishing
them. They didn't want to, but I did. The
major American newspapers at the time supported fascism as a legitimate
political movement. They loved Mussolini because they thought he restored
order to Italy and businesses there were doing well. It got more and
more difficult to report on what was really happening there.
(5)
George
Seldes
wrote about Cheka
in his book
You Can't Print That! (1929)
The Cheka (Chesvychaika),
or GPU, is the instrument of the red terror, organized in 1918, through
which the Soviet government, the Communist party and the Third International,
Russia's indivisible trinity, maintains itself in dictatorial power
to this very day. The years have brought a change in name, less activity,
more secrecy.
The era of wanton murder
has passed, it is true; public trials within fourteen days after arrest
are now ordered by law and in most cases given. But the terror has
entered into the souls of the Russian people.
Because of the Cheka,
freedom has ceased to exist in Russia. There is no democracy. It is
not wanted. Only American apologists for the Soviets have ever pretended
there was democracy in Russia. " Democracy " says a communist
axiom " is a delusion of the bourgeois mind." Justice in
Russia is communist justice: the end justifies the means, and the
end is Communism at all costs, including the lives of its opponents.
Freedom, liberty, justice
as we know it, democracy, all the fundamental human rights for which
the world has been fighting for civilized centuries, have been abolished
in Russia in order that the communist experiment might be made. They
have been kept suppressed
by the Cheka.
The Cheka is the instrument
of militant Communism. It is a great success. The terror is in the
mind and marrow of the present generation and nothing but generations
of freedom and liberty will ever root it out.
The victims of the Cheka
are estimated anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000, with the truth probably
mid-ways. But it is not a matter of numbers. The outstanding fact
today is that by their tortures, wholesale arrests and wholesale murders
of liberals suspected of not favouring the Bolshevik interpretation
of Communism, the Cheka has terrorized a whole generation, the people
of our time.
The victims are usually
non-Bolshevik radicals, especially Socialists, social-revolutionaries
and Mensheviks, who, incidentally, are more hated by the Bolsheviks
than the capitalists, the nobility or the bourgeoisie.
(6)
George Seldes, You Can't Print That! (1929)
Many people trembled when
the name of the dictator was mentioned. But in dirty little offices
sat little grey bureaucrats who changed Lenin's speeches when they
feared he had spoken too dangerously, and in other dirty little offices
sat military political police officials who bragged that they would
arrest the man if he acted too dangerously.
When we said to the censors,
" Lenin himself said this," they laughed. When it served
their purposes they added or deleted, and sometimes they suppressed
Lenin entirely. When it pleased them they arranged interviews, but
for years they did their best to keep the " capitalist"
journalists out of Lenin's sight. We heard him, however, at all the
big congresses.
He spoke with a thick,
throaty, wet voice. He was in very good humour, always smiling, his
face never was hard. All his pictures are hard but he was always twinkling
with laughter. Eyes bright, crowsfeet, a real, unserious face. He
had a clever motion of the hand by which he could emphasize a point
and yet steal a look at the time on his wrist watch. Frequently he
pointed with both index fingers, upwards, shoulder high, like the
conventional picture of a Chinese dancer.
He was dressed in a cheap
grey semi-military uniform, a civilian transplanted into ill-fitting
army-issue clothes. They were grey-black but the crease in the trousers
was already giving because there is too much shoddy in the wool. The
tunic, which is high like the American doughboy's, was open at the
neck revealing a flannel shirt and a bright blue necktie, loosely
tied. His eyes were not half as oriental as the photographs have made
him, because he has full eyebrows, not merely stubs at the nose, which
the pictures emphasize.
He reported on foreign
and domestic affairs. He never hesitated to acknowledge defeats and
failures. But he was always optimistic. My disillusion was profound.
I wondered how this man, who has so little magnetism, had come to
the fore in a radical environment where spell-binding oratory, silver-tongued
climaxes, soap-box repartee, have been the road to success. Only once
did he aim to produce a laugh, and even that had his touch of irony.
"We have pruned and pruned our bureaucracy," he said, "and
after four years we have taken a census of our government staff and
we have an increase of 12,000."
Lenin had the greatness
and the human, all-too-human sympathy to be a comrade to all, the
group of fellow dictators and the peasants who loved him. In battle
with his enemies he was uncompromising and without pity. He hated
power, knowing its corruption. His political wisdom was great; he
understood mob psychology thoroughly but was a little weak in his
grasp of individual psychology; he never made a mistake in dealing
with the masses but he frequently did in choosing men to share power.
(7)
George Seldes, interviewed by Randolph T. Holhut (1992)
Lincoln
Steffens was the godfather of us all. He was an older man when I first
met him (in 1919). He was the first of the muckrakers. As he once
said, "where there's muck, I'll rake it." He often warned
me that I was starting to get a bad reputation for myself. I guess
I never worried about that.
(8)
George Seldes, Lords of the Press (1938)
The failure of a free press
in most countries is usually blamed on the readers. Every nation gets
the government--and the press - it deserves. This is too facile a
remark. The people deserve better in most governments and press. Readers,
in millions of cases, have no way of finding out whether their newspapers
are fair or not, honest or distorted, truthful or colored.
There are less than a dozen
independent newspapers in the whole country, and even that small number
is dependent on advertisers and other things, and all these other
things which revolve around money and profit make real independence
impossible. No newspaper which is supporting one class of society
is independent.
(9)
George Seldes, Tell
the Truth and Run (1953)
The
middle of the road is a crowded place. During all these years of work
and talk I had had a fine contempt for the frightened majority which
traveled the middle road. I had thought of myself as one of the non-conformists
along the less-traveled and rather lonely individual path of my choosing.
(10)
George Seldes, In
Fact (1942)
Question:
Can you trust the press?
George
Seldes: The baseball scores are always correct (except for a typographical
error now and then). The stock market tables are correct (within the
same limitation). But when it comes to news which will affect you,
your daily life, your job, your relation to other peoples, your thinking
on economic and social problems, and, more important today, your going
to war and risking your life for a great ideal, then you cannot trust
about 98 percent (or perhaps 99 1/2 percent) of the big newspaper
and big magazine press of America.
Question:
But why can't you trust the press?
George
Seldes: Because it has become big business. The big city press and
the big magazines have become commercialized, or big business organizations,
run with no other motive than profit for owner or stockholder (although
hypocritically still maintaining the old American tradition of guiding
and enlightening the people). The big press cannot exist a day without
advertising. Advertising means money from big business.
(11)
A. J. Liebling, The Wayward Pressman (1947)
George Seldes about as subtle as a house falling in. He makes too
much of the failure of newspapers to print exactly what George Seldes
would have printed if he were the managing editor. But he is a useful
citizen. In fact is a fine little gadfly, representing an enormous
effort for one man and his wife.
(12)
George Seldes, interviewed by Randolph T.
Holhut (1992)
A
lot of people call here and say "I didn't know you were still
alive." For a long time, my name never appeared in the papers.
People thought "this guy is a troublemaker, the hell with him."
I never had it easy, but I never missed a meal and I've never been
broke.
One of the greatest sources of comfort to me is knowing that I have
lived long enough to be vindicated. I've outlived all of my enemies,
but I've also outlived all of my friends.
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