Unknown:
For nineteen years, Isidor F. Stone wrote and edited and published his own
four-page Newspaper, the I.F. Stone Bi-weekly. He called it a flea bite
Newspaper or the journalistic equivalent of the old fashioned Jewish momma and
poppa grocery store. When he decided to retire it in 1971, it had built up a
national circulation of more than 60,000 subscribers and an influence that went
well beyond its sise and number of subscribers. It was, like its one-man editorial staff [Fucking A.], aggressively independent, liberal tyrannical in outlook and
relentless in its pursuit of the elusive Truth. His colleagues in the
Washington Press Corps generally regard Izzy Stone as the best investigative
reporter in the Business. A number of his pieces in recent years have been
collected in the I.F. Stone Reader, only the most recent of his ten or so
books. Since retiring the bi-weekly, he’s become a contributing editor for the
New York Review of Books.
1.
Day: Mr. Stone, in the last
nineteen years with the I.F. Stone Bi-weekly, you’ve had a chance to stand
apart from Institutions, not be a part of any Institution. Why?
2.
I.F. Stone: Institutions
are very powerful. Those who run them are run by them because the circumstances
and the nature of the Institution severely limit his decision making capacity.
It’s true of everybody, but men can’t live without Institutions.
3.
Day: Of course.
4.
I.F. Stone: So it’s
important in a Good Society to have Institutions. You have to have them. It’s
also important to have independent voices with the Freedom to Express
Themselves who can check the abuses of Institutions.
5.
Day: What about the men
you’ve dealt with over the years, in Institutions? Do they behave differently
as members of Institutions than they might behave as Individuals, so they are
influenced by the Institution?
6.
I.F. Stone: I think
inevitably and invariably. No matter how. Take a man like McNamara who’s a very able man. There were severe
limits to what he could do as the Secretary of Defense. That’s a tremendous Organisation,
a military Bureaucracy. No matter how active, vigilant, vigorous the head of it
is, very severe limits to what he can do. The only
way to be free is not to have Power. I mean, Diogenes in his tub was free and
could afford to tell Alexander to get out of his, to get out of the way while
taking a sunbath.
7.
Day: You have to have
People with Power?
8.
I.F. Stone: Yeah, sure, and
you have to have People without Power. You have to have a. You can’t run a
complicated Society without Bureaucracies and you have to have Mechanisms that
preserve Independence of Judgement and Expression and will check their abuses
and criticise their shortcomings and act as a watchdog over them. That is what
the Press is supposed to be in a free Society, but the Press itself becomes institutionalised.
9.
Day: Does it have an
adversarial Relationship with Institutions with Government and.
10.
I.F. Stone: [Mnemotechnique] It has to have. If it stops being
adversary, it stops doing its Job. That doesn’t mean it needs to be perpetually
hostile, but basically skeptical and never to allow itself to be drawn into the
Universe of the men who run the Government. Everybody
has their own Universe and their own rationale and their own excuses and their
own adjustment to what they have to do. And most men are, Most men are
honorable and want to do a Good Job.
11.
Day: Do you mean the
Government Institutions are not riddled with Evil men?
12.
I.F. Stone: No, no. I mean,
certainly, I’ve been in Washington a long time. People
don’t realise that down in the
bowels of the Government are a lot of devoted and hard
working People. People are led to do Evil, in spite of themselves, by the
nature of the Institutions in which they are trapped.
13.
Day: And have the capacity
to rationalise that, I suppose, for their own.
14.
I.F. Stone: I once had to talk to a group of visiting
journalists and I said, “The first thing to remember when you talk to
Government officials here, is don’t believe anything they have to say. [adding to himself] Don’t take seriously anything they say.” They
laughed. I said, “I didn’t say that for a laugh. I wasn’t being cynical. But
what I mean is that most of what you hear is the rationalisation of
bureaucratic inertia, the momentum of the huge Machine. To get ahead in that
Machine, you have to show you’re on the team,” as the Military say. Therefore,
you have to excuse it, to rationalise it, to further its own purposes and these
Institutions which are supposed to be a Means become an End in themselves.
15.
Day: You’ve seen the growth
of Institutions here in Washington in the years you have been here. Is that
going to be inevitable that it will continue to grow and grow and Institutions
will take a larger and larger part in our lives?
16.
I.F. Stone: I think so,
yeah. I think so because Life is becoming more complex. Our problems are
becoming more difficult. It makes it all the more important, however, to keep a
check on the enormous Power in the Government.
17.
Day: At the same time,
those who keep that check, the Press in this particular case, is also becoming,
I suppose, more institutionalised in the sense that there are fewer and larger
Newspapers resulting.
18.
I.F. Stone: It’s true, but
still, Institutions. Well, at the moment, I’ve never seen the Media as Good as
they are today. Compared with the twenties, for example, the thirties, far
better. The reporting is better, far more Independence, as far as the big Good
Papers are concerned. Most Papers in this Country do a very Bad Job in the
sense that there is very little News in them. They rarely express an opinion
one way or another. They are
really an adjunct to the advertising pages. [Houston Chronicle] The average American in the average small town is very poorly
informed.
19.
Day: So for a man who ran
one of America’s smallest Newspapers, you say that quality often is with the
largest, not with the smallest, even though you, yourself, ran a quite
different kind of small Newspaper, the size does have some Relationship to
quality then?
20.
I.F. Stone: There is a lot of Myth. I started Work on a small
town daily in a town of about 5,000 Population. There’s a lot of Mythology
about small town editors and Newspapers. In a small town, it’s very hard to be
independent. People know each other too well. You can’t step on their toes.
There’s no diversity of Advertising. You have to depend on the Powers that be
for legal Advertising. A local editor in a small town has much less Power than
an editor of a big Paper in a big City, because if he antagonises one group of
advertisers, there’s another one to turn to. There is more diversity in the
Market, and he can afford to express much more independent opinions. Then I’ve seen some
Institutions change. The New York Times in the twenties and thirties was really
pretty Bad. It’s gotten steadily better.
21.
Day: What’s brought about
the improvement in these large City Newspapers, the large Papers?
22.
I.F. Stone: What’s that?
23.
Day: What’s brought about
that improvement? Increased professional standards?
24.
I.F. Stone: Well, I think
Tradition plays a very useful part in human Life, and the Jeffersonian
Tradition, the Idea of the First amendment, the Duty of the Press, the sense of
public Obligation tends to mold People just as judges are molded by the Law, so
newspaper-men tended to be molded by the fact that they are in our Country. I
think American Journalism is superior to that of most Countries in the World in
the sense that the journalist in our Country has a higher
and more dignified position than most Countries. If you read Balzac, see what
19th century French Journalism was like. Even in England, a journalist was
looked upon as a hack unless he works for one of the gentlemanly Papers. Here,
because of the First Amendment and Jefferson and the
whole Spirit of the American Government, the Press is regarded as really a
Fourth Estate. A sense of Duty and Responsibility, Power, and Obligation mold
People. And then the effect, the Vietnam War had some Good effects. It taught reporters that they could be lied to
over and over and over again by the Government, and they better watch and not
just take down the words of the Secretary of State or the President as Holy
Writ. They learned a lot of
lessons. Then the new Generation of youngsters came along with much less
stuffiness, much less Respect for existing Institutions, much less desire to
just make a buck, much more desire for public service, much more concern for
other human beings. These youngsters have had a Good effect. Look at Time
Magazine, how that’s improved over what it was fifteen, twenty years ago. I
feel that the big Media and TV are doing a much better Job than they did. I’m
not sure it will go on. I think that.
25.
Day: Why aren’t you sure?
26.
I.F. Stone: You see, this Country is partly a Democracy and partly a Plutocracy.
People have the Right to
Vote, and when they want
something and get off their butt and really ask for it, they get it. It works. But they don’t know what they want or don’t pay
much attention, then men with big Money buy what they want. That’s the big Evil disclosed behind Watergate: Just buy the
Government and buy its policies. The Expense of running Campaigns makes it
necessary to go out and raise an awful lot of Money that’s why I’m for public
financing of Campaigns. These big-moneyed men tend to buy up Newspapers like
any other Property and run them like a Property, that is to make Money. A
Newspaper isn’t supposed to be - it has to make a Profit, sure - but it isn’t
supposed to be devoted to making Money. It has a very fundamental role to play
in a free Society, and it’s a great role protected by the Constitution. We’ve
had some great publishers who’ve worked that way. We still have some great
Newspapers like the Times and the Washington Post, the Washington Star which is
different in outlook, but equally independent. I feel very Good about the State
of the Media except out in the Country. When you
get out and travel around the Country, you’re just cut off in the News. You
don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how People can. Even the main TV shows
are cut down and space is made for local Television and local Sports and things
like that. The Country, in many ways, is very poorly informed for such a
literate People, for such a free Society.
27.
Day: You began your own
journalistic Career in a relatively small Town, didn’t you, in New Jersey?
28.
I.F. Stone: I started in a
small town weekly while I was going to high School, then I began to Work as
country correspond for a small city paper. I’ve done everything on a paper except set type.
29.
Day: Didn’t you publish
your own Newspaper, as a matter of fact, when you were in high School at the
age of fourteen?
30.
I.F. Stone: Yes, I did. At
fourteen, I started a little Paper. It only ran for three issues because my
father discovered I was completely neglecting my school work and made me stop.
31.
Day: You have five hundred
subscribers or so didn’t you?
32.
I.F. Stone: I had
advertising, subscribers-
33.
Day: Editorial policy?
34.
I.F. Stone: Editorial
policy.
35.
Day: What was the policy?
36.
I.F. Stone: Well, I was a very strong League of Nations man. I remember writing
pieces supporting Gandhi and the cause of Indian Freedom. I was very critical
of William Randolph Hearst, who at that time was a very demagogy right wing
publisher, earlier had been different. The old typesetters said it would spit
out tobacco juice and said I was going to come to a Bad end writing all that
radical stuff.
37.
Day: Those are pretty firm,
and perhaps radical convictions for a youngster of fourteen. What brought you
these convictions at an early age?
38.
I.F. Stone: I think Jack
London.
39.
Day: Your own reading.
40.
I.F. Stone: I think Jack
London was the start of my social consciousness. And then.
41.
Day: Any particular books
of London that did this?
42.
I.F. Stone: Well, Martin
Eden and. I just remember London opening my eyes and then all kinds of things.
Herbert Spencer, Kruputkin, and Marx and Engels. And Charles Beard. I was a
very great. I was a great reader. A real bookworm.
43.
Day: You were, were you an
eclectic reader? You read everything?
44.
I.F. Stone: Yeah, but I graduated 49th in a class of 52 in a
Country high School. Only one boy ranked lower than me because I just stopped doing
the schoolwork. I was doing Newspaper Work
during my sophomore, junior and senior years, and a lot of reading, but I was
very rebellious about doing my lessons.
45.
Day: Did you come from a
family that read a great deal, or was it something you picked up entirely on
your own?
46.
I.F. Stone: No. I really
picked it up on my own.
47.
Day: Did you have other
interests besides reading? It sounds as though you didn’t.
48.
I.F. Stone: Well, in a
small town with woods, you go out swimming and trapping. We had a raft. It was
still a very small town where you could have just a touch of Tom Sawyer, you
know, Huckleberry Finn, enough to understand Mark Twain. Book, I think books
were, and still are, my passion. I feel like Oliver Wendell Holmes that once said with a sigh, “I
hate to face my maker with the Thought of so many great books unread.”
49.
Day: Do you look back on it
as a relatively happy boyhood?
50.
I.F. Stone: Oh yes. Except
it was lonesome in a small town where very few People read books. To be an intellectual in a small town, a Jewish
intellectual in a small town was rather lonesome. There was nobody, really a couple [human beings] that you could
talk to about books and about ideas.
51.
Day: What about teachers?
Apparently not.
52.
I.F. Stone: Well, both at
School and at College, I had a couple of teachers that I really loved and
revered. No other words for it. Most teachers, I just rebelled against. I
didn’t think they were very Good. I rebelled against School altogether, even
though. I just rebelled against having things crammed down my throat by rote.
53.
Day: You wrote?
54.
I.F. Stone: By rote.
55.
Day: By rote, I’m sorry, yes. You did
go on to the University of Pennsylvania and what, studied Philosophy though,
but you didn’t finish.
56.
I.F. Stone: I majored in
Philosophy but I was working on the Newspaper, and I quit in my third year.
57.
Day: You were working on
the Newspaper a Good part of the time, I gather.
58.
I.F. Stone: Yeah. I waited on tables awhile the first year, but most of the time I
worked on a Newspaper. The year I quit, I was working about eleven hours a day
and night while going to School.
59.
Day: Pretty well committed
at that point, I suppose to a Career with Newspapers.
60.
I.F. Stone: Well, yeah. I was an experienced man by that time. I was
making forty dollars a week while going to School. In 1927 [AD], that was a lot
of Money. I was doing re-write and copy desk, so I was experienced.
61.
Day: You stayed with
Newspapers then for quite a few years as a matter of fact, didn’t you?
62.
I.F. Stone: Yes.
63.
Day: Left a small town and
then.
64.
I.F. Stone: I worked on the
Camden Courier, the Philadelphia Record, the Philadelphia Enquirer, The New York Post. I was editorial writer on
the Post in the thirties, from 33 to
39. Then I went down to Washington, came down from Washington from the Nation as Washington editor to help for
about five or six years. While Washington editor of The Nation, I began to Work for PM
and the successor papers, the New York
Star and the New York Daily Compass.
When the Compass closed in 1952, and I couldn’t
get my Job back at The Nation, I decided I would start a four-page newsletter.
65.
Day: What gave you the
inspiration to do your own Newsletter, to go entirely on your own after all
those years with Newspapers?
66.
I.F. Stone: Well, George
Seldes had done it successfully with In Fact about a decade earlier and done it
very well. I had seen so much Money go
down the drain, Money that wonderful, wealthy People like Marshall Field, for example, who was very Good to us at PM and a wonderful man. There you
had a wealthy man supporting a non-conformist Paper and taking a lot of static
from his socialite friends for doing it. He was very Good to us. He lost a
tremendous amount of Money. I thought, “Look, the
market’s very small. I’ll try to fit the product to the market and make it pay
for itself by putting it on a very small scale and doing all the Work myself.”
My wife and I did all the Work. I managed to get 5,300 subscribers to start with, and I budgeted
that very carefully so I didn’t have to run around pan-handling to keep going, and I
managed.
67.
Day: What kind of
Principles did you set for yourself when you built this one man Newspaper?
68.
I.F. Stone: Well, I wanted a radical Paper in a conservative
format. I wanted a dignified topography. I didn’t want screaming, sensational
headlines. I didn’t want exaggeration. I didn’t want to pretend I had inside
Information when I didn’t. I wanted to be sober and factual, as accurate as I
could make it, reasoned, not hysterical so that People on the other side would
have to take it seriously, persuasive. I tried to prove what I was saying from
the horse’s mouth as it were, using the Government’s own documents, Government
reports and transcripts and press conferences and speeches and analysing the
way a historian would, putting them in perspective, so that a man on a college
campus who took it and showed it to a conservative colleague, he wouldn’t just
brush it off, he’d have to take it seriously.
69.
Day: You were concerned not
just with reaching the converted, so to speak. But you wanted to.
70.
I.F. Stone: No, I tried to
reach other People.
71.
Day: In fact, you had some
very distinguished subscribers in that early subscription list and later ones
too, of course.
72.
I.F. Stone: I had a lot of
undistinguished subscribers too, which pleased me even more, because I wanted to support People that were being harassed and
destroyed by the Witchhunt. I wanted to defend what I considered basic, American Principles,
that is the Right of Freedom of Speech and Free Political Activity. That meant defending first the Trotskyites then
the Communists. I disagreed with liberals that were only prepared to defend
People if it could be proven that they were practically illiterate and couldn’t
possibly be Marxists and they weren’t really Communists. I felt that unless it was
Freedom for everybody, it would be whittled away for everybody.
73.
Day: That means Freedom for half Truths as well as
Truths. Freedom.
74.
I.F. Stone: Freedom for Lies.
75.
Day: For Lies.
76.
I.F. Stone: The basic
premise of a free Society is that none of us can be sure of the Truth and none
of us can ever be sure of the whole Truth, and therefore it’s worth listening
to others. Unless you’re willing to have People tell Lies or half Lies, you
shut off Truths. There’s no way of policing it. There has to be Freedom,
there’s no halfway house. That was the Philosophy of Jefferson, of the First
Amendment and. Then I wanted to fight for Peace and for Co-existence.
77.
Day: Co-existence during a
time of Cold War. You did not favour the Cold War.
78.
I.F. Stone: No, I was
against the Cold War. I was for [Henry] Wallace in 1948. I’m very glad that I
was. I realise that he had certain shortcomings, but here’s Richard Nixon doing
what Henry Wallace proposed in 1948. I think there’s a lot of things Wrong in Russia and the Soviet
System. [Accurate.] I think that to make a
Good Society there, you’re going to have to find some way to mesh together the
Jeffersonian Idea with the Socialist Idea. To me, it’s very thrilling to see
that when Workers revolt, as they did in Hungary in 1956 or in the Baltic
Cities in Poland, one of the first things they asked for was Freedom of the
Press. People that don’t have it realise it’s a necessity. For me, that’s a
demonstration that what Jefferson represents, what Milton represents is a
fundamental Value and necessity in human Life.
79.
Day: It’s been very
important to you to maintain your Independence, hasn’t it? You’ve not gone on
the usual rounds of inside contacts in Washington. You’ve kept yourself apart
from Friendships of that sort or apart from.
80.
I.F. Stone: I’ve always
felt that it was dangerous to get too close to People in Power, and when you
were working on a really Good story, the People to trust, the People to go to
were those People down in the
bowels of that Bureaucracy that were dealing with that specific subject and who
were never going to run for public Office, and had no ax to grind, because you
have to be careful. You know,
this business of leaks can be. It has its very Bad as well as its Good side. People leak for malicious reasons, for Unworthy
reasons, for self-serving reasons. A reporter has to be very careful in taking leaks
and judging the Person giving it to you and checking the thing out. Leaks are
important but they are very dangerous, and a responsible journalist has to.
81.
Day: You built up a
subscription list. I said 60,000 in the beginning. It was over 70,000. It was a
rather remarkable subscriber list for a Publication of this sort. Why did you
give it up?
82.
I.F. Stone: It just got to be too much for me. It just physically got to be too
much. It was an enormous amount of Work. I had to change from a weekly to a bi-weekly. I began getting angina
pectoris, and I just had to stop.
83.
Day: Aside from the demands
of Time and so forth, do you miss the voice that you had?
84.
I.F. Stone: I don’t I like
to look back. I enjoyed that very much, but I would like to learn a little more
and work on a. Try to understand things better and work on some bigger
projects.
85.
Day: You’ve been quoted as
saying that through all the years of your writing, you’ve been practicing the
scales, and now you’d like to give yourself some time, in Leisure, to do
something of real Value.
86.
I.F. Stone: I would.
87.
Day: Do you feel you have
not done something of Value in the writing you have done in all these years?
88.
I.F. Stone: I guess so, but
I like to do my very best. A man never achieves his best, you have to keep
striving for it. I would like to write something of Value, particularly in the
field of Freedom of Thought and Expression and its importance for a Good
Society. It’s menaced by the terribly draconian Dictatorships of the Communist
States and it’s menaced by the new Technologies and Means of Surveillance and
the means of inculcating Conformity in the West, and in our own Country it’s
menaced by the enormous Power of the Office of the Presidency. The President,
irrespective who he is today, is so powerful that the temptations of the office
for Good or Evil are too great for any one man. I think we ought to begin to
dismantle the office. I think we ought to have a head of State symbolising the
Country and around whom the natural feelings of Patriotism and Reverence
accrue, but separate him from the head of the Government.
89.
Day: Thank you very much.
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