Page "George Seldes" Paragraph 18

Two books on the newspaper business established his enduring reputation as a critic of the press: Freedom of the Press ( 1935 ) and Lords of the Press ( 1938 ).

He took the title of the latter from a speech by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes: " Our ancestors did not fight for the right of a few Lords of the Press to have almost exclusive control of and censorship over the dissemination of news and ideas.

" He believed " that advertisers were a far greater threat to journalistic freedom than government censorship.

" The press and news, he wrote, " are coming more and more under the domination of a handful of corporate publishers who may print such news as they wish to print and omit such news as they do not wish to print.

" Time was initially positive in its response: " A rambling but effective attack on U. S. newspapers, charging coloring, distortion or suppression of vital news, containing some enlightening instances of journalistic malpractices as George Seldes encountered them during his career as correspondent.

" Later, Time called him a muckraker, meaning a biased and crusading critic, when it called another writer's work " refreshingly fair and accurate ( especially in comparison with muckraking books like George Seldes ' Lords of the Press ).

" Seldes told of his pursuit of a tobacco study that he would make public years later, though the author of the study denied his account and claimed his work had been widely cited in the press.