332
PARTISAN REVIEW
been brought, or if brought "aggressively defended." In my view,
she is wrong on nearly all counts.
The offending speech should have been broadcast and pub–
lished, even at the risk of error. Obviously if that risk could have
been reduced-and the risk of error in fast-breaking controversial
stories of this kind can rarely be eliminated-it would have been, as
all responsible journalists would choose to do so. But the subjects of
the stories were both high-ranking military leaders with enormous
followings, power, and access to the media. Being attacked, even be–
ing wrongly attacked, comes with the job description, as Harry
Truman so aptly reminded us with his famous kitchen metaphor.
Both General Sharon and Westmoreland chose to remain in par–
ticularly hot kitchens, giving orders which caused the deaths of
numerous young soldiers and civilians.
If
they were wrongly accused
of certain terrible actions-and I am prepared to assume they
were-they had ample opportunity to present their accounts in the
marketplace of ideas. And they did, repeatedly and angrily. Even
persuasively! But when CBS and
Time
refused to retract their ac–
counts, the Generals sued. And the media defendants vigorously
defended their constitutional right to broadcast and publish what
they believed to be true. Ms. Adler wishes they had rolled over and
played dead, instead of hiring a law firm-both hired the same
firm-that attacks its opponents like "a pack of Dobermans, who
are clambering to be unleashed." But that too is part of our constitu–
tional system of adversary justice. Once a controversy turns into a
libel case, it should be treated like a case capable of setting a terrible
precedent for First Amendment freedoms. General Sharon too was
represented by a ferocious tiger, Milton Gould, one of the most
formidable litigators in the country. Not surprisingly, the
Time–
Sharon case ended in a draw. The jury found that
Time
had defamed
Sharon by printing a false story, but that the reporter had been
negligent and careless rather than malicious or reckless. The CBS
case resulted in an unconditional surrender by Westmoreland. Adler
succeeds in convincing the reader that this surrender was the fault of
Westmoreland's inept chief counsel, an inexperienced right-wing
cause lawyer, rather than a reflection of the weakness of his legal
case, or the Truth of the CBS report. We are led to believe that had
the lawyers in that case been a match, perhaps it too would have
ended with an equivocal result reflecting what Adler believes to be
the Truth-namely, that CBS, like
Time,
doctored the underlying
