THE MEDIA AND OUR COUNTRY'S AGENDA
581
saw fit to publish. I would have nothing to say about it. So then 1 did one
of those things you can do when you're up against a vital issue. I said that
if they published a bastardized version of my piece, 1would call the Asso–
ciated Press in the morning and renounce responsibility for the piece, say–
ing it did not give a true account of my interview.
Well, needless to say, thi s sent off skyrockets all over the place. They
killed the piece, and when 1 went home that night I wasn't even sure I
still had a job at the
New York Times.
I came to work early the next
morning before most people had come to work and one of the things on
my desk was a cable from Dave Shipl er, who had succeeded Rick Smith
as chief of the Moscow bureau. T he cable said, "Dear Hilton, what a
great interview with Solzhenitsyn. Congratulations." I thought, how
could he have read it? They had killed it, and 1 couldn't believe they had
sent it to him. 1 was still in a state of confusion until my secretary came
to work . 1 told her what was going on. Well, as it happened, before she
worked in my department she had been on the staff of the
New York
Times
news service, which was the branch of the
Times
that sends out
New York Times
material to some six hundred client papers around the
country. And she said, "Oh, I'm sure 1 know what happened. They
killed your piece but they forgot to inform the
New York Times
news
service that it was killed." And she was right, because I quickly discov–
ered that this interview with Solzhenitsyn the
Times
killed appeared in
six hundred newspapers that day, including the
New York Herald Tri–
bune
in Paris, the
Philadelphia Enquirer,
and the
Washington Star.
It
was all over this country and Europe and some papers in Asia . This was,
of course, delicious denouement for me. I went to see Jimmy Greenfield
and said, "Well, I'll probably be getting a ca ll from Vermont, if not
today then tomorrow, 1 expect. What is the official
New York Times
explanation as to why the
Times
cou ldn 't publish its own scoop but was
scooped by its own clients?" He said, "Well, just tell him there were
some technical problems." 1 said, "Are you really prepared for Alexan–
der Solzhenitsyn to ca ll a news conference and say the
New York Times
was technically unequipped to publish this story?" He said, "I don't
care what he thinks." By that time 1was already thinking about leaving
the paper, which I did some time later to create
The New Criterion.
But
that's my ta le of media bias. Thank you.
Michael Meyers:
I'm Michae l Meyers, Executive Director of the New
York Civil Rights Coalition, former Assistant Nationa l Director of the
NAACP, former Assistan t to the Chancellor of Higher Education in
