Stone refused to let politics control paper

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Stone refused to let politics control paper

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His name was I.F. Stone.

Stone was one of the nation's greatest journalists. Born in 1907 to Russian Jewish immigrants, he studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. After reading Jack London, he became a radical journalist. He worked at three major newspapers and became associate editor of the Nation in 1939. And, after that, two more papers before founding his own political paper, the I.F. Stone's Weekly in 1953, a must read for the Washington Press corps of the day. During his legendary career, he supported Roosevelt's attempt to expand the Supreme Court, attacked the nation's failure to prepare for World War II and told the story of the migration of Eastern European Jews at the end of that war.

"Izzy" scorned the Washington Press corps as a generally lazy bunch who loved administration favors and handouts and didn't put too fine a point on ethical lapses. Stone adamantly refused to ever attend a White House press conference, saying that if he wanted news, he would have to go and dig it out. Izzy wasn't pretty, no TV image for him. Shambling, wrinkled, with thick glasses and a brilliant ability to sense the shades of truth and lies shared with him by confidential sources, his Weekly soared to a circulation of 70,000 with a large White House readership. Izzy wasn't lovable. But Izzy was important.

His ridicule of the White House press conference is more true today than ever — a staged event where "tough" reporters toss "soft questions" to a press secretary who seldom, if ever, knows how to say a blunt statement of fact. CNN and FOX and MSNBC and PBS slavishly run the entire show, and the commentators are as banal as the event itself. But even Stone, who knew in the '50s that the press conference was worthless, would be amazed at the blatant press manipulation going on by Karl Rove and the White House. The White House has long planted "sympatric" journalists to ask "sympatric" questions of the press secretary. But even these reporters were credentialed by the White House Press Association.

But James Gucker, aka Jeff Gannon, wasn't. The White House let him join the corps, and for two years the conservative correspondent wrote for two political Web sites bankrolled by a rich Texas Republican. The Secret Service, it is assumed, never found out that he was working under an assumed name and doing full-frontal ads for stud services for $1,200 a weekend. But, anyone who wanted to read Gannon's hate speech knew he attacked John Kerry by claiming Kerry was running on a "pro-homosexual platform" under this headline: "Kerry could become first gay president."

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Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU's School of Journalism.

Originally published February 23, 2005