TIME: THE WEEKLY FICTION MAGAZINE

At Fact's invitation, celebrities from all walks of life tell of their bitter experiences with Time's distortions, omissions, and lies

Ralph Ingersoll
former publisher of Time

Time's technique for handling news is so simple that it seems to have eluded several generations of critics and yet it is almost solely responsible for (A) Time's monumental commercial success and (B) Time's equally monumental failure in the fields of ethics, integrity, and responsibility.

The problem Henry R. Luce (now Time's editor-in-chief ) and the late Briton Hadden tackled when they set out to invent their new kind of weekly news magazine was how to condense a week's news on all fronts: national, international, cultural, and business into a package of words that could be read cover to cover in a couple of hours.

It was the same problem that the then-great Literary Digest had successfully solved by clipping the week's output of newspapers and magazines for their gist. Controversial matters, such as political news, were handled by snipping quotes from both sides. But Luce and Hadden felt that this approach had limitations both as to the quantity of news it could handle and its readability. After all, the Digesttechnique was self-limited; it confined its editors to the material to be digested and most public utterances are on the dull side to begin with.

Luce and Hadden's solution was brilliant.

Instead of digesting the news, they would rewrite it into short articles, each having its own literary form: a beginning, a middle, and an end, though not of course necessarily in that sequence. Thus they wrote their own literary license for a new kind of news writing that was not news writing at all but good old-fashioned, time ( small t)-tested fiction writing.

It would, of course, be fiction that used real people and real facts as material, but for readability's sake the fiction form was the important ingredient. Only by the fiction writer's art could the secondhand news that Time proposed to package and sell be made inviting enough to attract the readers Luce and Hadden hoped to get. It was Hadden, probably, who stepped up the voltage even higher by the studied use of bizarre adjectives, chosen and inserted for their shock value alone: snaggle-toothed, bumble-footed, and like Timeisms.

The irritant quality of what came to be called Time-style was originally a calculated addition and a vital necessity to two very young men trying to get a then-indifferent public to pay them mind (and buy their little magazine). But the use of dramatic narrative for the presentation of "news" was inherent and germane to the whole idea.

In this writer's opinion, it remains the basic reason for Time's success. It does indeed make "news" more readable. You can be esoteric about it if you like: It makes it possible for the reader to escape the realities to which responsible journalism is confined; to live in dreamland forever. Or you can simply feel that the advantage ( to the Time writer over the responsible journalist) of being able to dramatize at will is so obvious that it merits no more than a shrug as comment.

Less obvious, but just as real, is the equally inescapable truth that, once one has committed oneself to writing news as if it were fiction, one has opened a Pandora's box of evil temptations.

I believe that in the beginning the magazine's romantic young writers and editors did try, and try hard, to keep their fictions in touch with their facts. I believe, in fact, that they still do, but for other reasons now. Originally they meant no harm, saw themselves as dedicated to dispelling the ignorance of their elders, took for granted their responsibility. Now I believe no such things about what they and their successors have become. The only hold that reality has on them now is the necessity to remain plausible, to fool enough of the people with their claptrap about responsible journalism to get by. Time's staff has long been both intelligent and sophisticated. Only the juveniles amongst them have any lingering illusions about their essential dishonesty or the basic corruption of the business they are engaged in: taking hard-earned facts and weaving them into snares for the ignorant for their personal and corporate profit.

What makes the contemporary Time truly sinister is that its corporate profit has been so great that it has been able to build up the largest and, probably, the most efficient news-gathering organization ever created by man all to the purpose not of telling more truth to a world in sorry need of same, but of making grist for its mill of plausibility. It is as if our greatest scholars were dedicated not to revealing truth but to distorting it for their personal profit and for the gratification of whatever whims might move them.

It is also an essential part of Time's technique to insulate its public from its raw material by means of group editing and anonymous writing. This phase of Time's corruption is probably the most commented on by Time's perennial critics. But to me it seems no more than an enraging insult added to a mortal injury.

The mortal injury is the poison inherent in Time's technique of mislabeling fiction as news The bittersweet coating is its plausibility. The way to tell a successful lie is to include enough truth in it to make it believable and Time is the most successful liar of our times. Hitler overdid his act; Khrushchev and Mao simply haven't learned Time's secret of including enough reality to be plausible.

Elizabeth New Jersey

Sloan Wilson
author

Any enemy of Time is a friend of mine I'll try to sort out my personal prejudices in telling you of my relationship over the years with this magazine.

In 1947 I had the title of assistant to the director of special projects at Time and Life The funny title meant that I helped Roy Larsen, who was then president of the whole corporation, write speeches and form a well-intentioned project for the benefit of the public schools. l quit Time, to work for the school commission that we formed and to write books. My association with Roy Larsen was in general happy.

My second relationship with this curious corporation has been as a journalist. I have written three articles for Life, one of which was published under the pen name of John William Sperry because Roy Larsen was afraid that my opinions of teacher education would be attributed to his school commission, which I am very much afraid turned out to have no opinions at all after spending a great deal of money. Now as a writer I won't work for Life anymore be cause, although they pay a lot, they dishonor me. They change what I write without requesting my permission and they often insert their own horrible sentences under my by-line. Their editors also have the curious feeling that they are totally superior to writers. It has been my experience that I can work better with good editors than I can work alone. I love talking an article over and a good editor can often show me how to sharpen my work. But the editors at Life are different. I don't think they know it and I feel sorry for them but they form the same kind of sick relationship with writers that sick men form with sick call-girls. They do not know the meaning of love.

Time and Life would say that the reason I am hostile to them is that they have been hostile to all my books. The book-review section of .Time has devoted several columns over the years to the task of explaining that I am a venal idiot. It does not become a writer to protest bad notices and I must be careful here to stick to facts. I am a human being who has written five novels which have been translated into many languages and which have been bought by millions of people who do not ask for their money back. I am a human being who works alone, except for my good wife, and although I have made a great deal of money I have no business sense and because of taxes and lawyers I cheerfully live in a two-room apartment. I am getting old enough and wise enough not to quiver when Time magazine ridicules me but their hostility confuses my children. When I labor to write a book I do not think they have to like the book, but I don't think they should write me up as though I had just mugged somebody in Times Square. I know they are jealous of my ability to survive as an independent writer and I know that though they probably don't realize it they are catering to the tastes of other jealous people who like to see other writers destroyed, but I do wish that Mr. Luce with all his money would send all his people to psychiatrists and get help in the proper way.

I am speaking not only from indignation at the way this corporation has treated me, but with a deep anger at the way they have treated many writers, including James Gould Cozzens, a good man whom they held up to public ridicule. They have not discovered the elementary truth about themselves, that they make their magazine important by decrying people most people think are good and by praising people that most people have never heard about.

It becomes me at the age of 43 to try to speak the truth, not only to vent just anger.

Time and Life in the balance provide a lot of entertainment and a lot of education for a lot of people. Although they hurt me I am in the balance glad that they are there, creating in their big corporate way just as I create in my little individual one but I'm sorry that this great animal of Time and Life is so hostile. The good people of the world should not spend so much time at each other's throats.

New York, New York

James Gould Cozzens
author

My knowledge of inaccuracies in Time is first-hand.

A cover story they ran on me a number of years ago was so full of nonsense that it would have amounted to a joke if much of the misinformation hadn't been phrased in ways that seemed to make me deride and despise quite a lot of people. Put into my mouth was a series of pronouncements, some asinine, some gratuitously unkind, that I'd be about the last writer in the world to make. Of course I was good and sore.

I've spent most of my writing life fending off publicity. As a result, I had little idea of what I might be up against when finally cornered by Time. I didn't allow for an obtuse and humorless, though certainly skilled, research man; nor for a careless and imperceptive writer working from probably unclear notes. I know differently now having learned the hard way. Williamstown, Massachusetts

Bertrand Russell
philosopher

I consider Time to be scurrilous and I know, with respect to my own work, utterly shameless in its willingness to distort. I cannot give you specific instances, because I have long ago discontinued attending to it. However, I do recall the remark of Zachariah Chafee upon being given an award by the Luce publications. He said: "I note that I have been attended by the Luce publications. You know the ones I mean; the one for those who cannot read and the other for those who cannot think."

Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales

Igor Stravinsky
Composer

Every music column I have read in Time has been distorted and inaccurate.

Hollywood, California

Tallulah Bankhead
actress and author

I'm an avid reader of Time. It provides me with an easy way to get a smattering of information on medicine, sports, art, science, religion, and other subjects that I have no profound knowledge of. I notice that many of Time's cover stories, however, are full of errors and contradictions. In Time of Dec. 1, 1961, for example, the talents of Tennessee Williams were evaluated as follows:

Williams writes like an arrested adolescent who imagines that he will attain stature if (as short boys are advised in Dixie) he loads enough manure in his shoes. In his plays he has hallucinated a vast but specious pageant of depravity in which fantasies of incest, cannibalism, murder, rape, sodomy and drug addition constitute the canon of reality.

Only three months later, on March 9, 1962, Time did a complete about-face and lionized Tennessee:

The fact is that Tennessee Williams is a consummate master of theatre. His plays beat with the heart's blood of drama: passion. He is the greatest U.S. playwright since Eugene O'Neill, and, barring the aged Sean O'Casey, the greatest living playwright anywhere. Williams has peopled the U.S. stage with characters whose vibrantly durable presences stalk the corridors of a playgoers memory. Williams' dialogue sings with a lilting eloquence far from the drab, disjunctive patterns of everyday talk. And for monologues, the theatre has not seen his like since the god of playwrights William Shakespeare.

More serious than Time's inconsistencies are its downright falsehoods. Alec Guinness said in an interview with Joe Hyams of the New York Herald Tribune that five of his best friends won't talk to him as the result of false statements attributed to him by Time. Time's cover story on me contained 29 inaccuracies. Is that a record? Four of these were flattering, mind you, but still they were untrue, and the sad fact is that most of them were malicious.

Time said I was "constitutionally unable to fit harmoniously into a group effort," that had "quarreled with almost every producer, director and playwright who has crossed her path," that I deprecated Norma Shearer's talent to her husband behind her back, that on the road l carry "three suitcases just for tranquilizers," that my sister and I get along like "fiends," that I was an unwanted child, like I feel "so painfully anonymous" in theater audiences that I light up cigars, that I "insist stage liquor be real," that I exhibit myself nude to strangers, and that I once "got Evangilist Aimee Semple McPherson tipsy and took pictures." Every one of these statements is a complete fabrication. Several, in fact, strike me as being libelous.

Such misstatements are a sheer disgrace of course, but one contained in Time of Oct. 27, 1958, was even worse. Time was reporting on a Democratic Party luncheon in Washington and it gave the impression that I got drunk, slithered across the dais, and tried to sit in the lap of President Truman. I was shocked and scorched when I read that story. I was absolutely infuriated. Everyone knows I'd give my life for the Democratic Party except for certain Dixiecrats and would never do anything that would embarrass or hurt Mr. Truman whom I love and respect with all my heart. Mind you, this nasty lie was not printed way back in the Theatre section but up front under National Affairs. Immediately, I telephoned Jack Parr and requested time to appear on his show. "Don't believe a word you read in Time. I told his audience. "It is made up of fakery, calumny, and viciousness. It is a brutal magazine, with the goddamdest distortion and lied I think dirt is too clean a word for Time magazine."

Frankly, I expected the audience to be stunned by the bitterness of my denunciation. Instead, do you know what the darlings did? They rose every last man and woman in the studio and they gave me the wildest ovation I have ever received in my life. New York, New York

line problem, I was ordered to fake a review of a Town Hall concert in honor of composer Virgil Thomson's 65th birthday five days before the concert actually took place. I did so and my senior editor embellished the falsified story with descriptions of the "misty, impressionistic charm" and "abrasive and somber" character of performances by Leonard Bernstein and other artists.

The review appeared on the streets the day before the concert, much to the embarrassment of Mr. Thomson and to the distress of ticketholders who stormed the box-office and demanded refunds, sharply curtailing attendance when the concert finally did take place.

Time's editors can get away with such shenanigans because they are not identified by by lines and therefore bear no responsibility for their statements. They have a buck passing system built in. I know for a fact that the Music Critics Circle of New York has never admitted Time's critic to membership.

Ezra Goodman, the most distinguished Hollywood reporter in Time's history, quit because editors in New York were tampering with his copy. Goodman wrote such famous Time cover stories as those on Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Kim Novak, Walt Disney, Gwen Verdon, William Holden, and Frank Sinatra. In his book, The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, Goodman tells what Time's editors did to his reporting on the Marilyn Monroe cover story:

I interviewed more than a hundred of Miss Monroe's Friends and enemies, spent a good deal of time with her, and then transmitted my thoroughly documented findings running almost to book length to New York via the magazine's private Teletype system. This material as then put into the editorial meat grinder and out it came at the other end couched in Time's portentous and stentorian gobbledygook and without much resemblance to what had been fed in. It was compounded mostly of hearsay, myth, old file clippings, and just plain invention. As one of the writers at the magazine once pointed out, Time is "emit" spelled backward, and much that was fed into Time's editorial, word grinding maw came out facts backward. Once the editors in New York had made up their mind about something, they did not like to have their opinions dislodged by mere facts.

The heedlessness of Time editors for facts has resulted in a greater number of libel suits than the public at large is permitted to know about. One which took place recently was Pape vs. Time, Inc. ( 3 l 8 F 2nd 652 7th Circuit l 963 ), in which the United States Court of Appeals ruled in a libel complaint by a Chicago policeman that "a jury could find that Time went beyond the limit of fairness . . . and in making its articles more interesting and readable for its audience, it departed from fidelity" to facts.

Time's writers are talented and sensitive people. But they lie for money. In short, they are whores. They lack principles or scruples and this brings unhappiness not only to people they are writing about but to themselves. I myself often felt pangs of guilt when working at Time. Discussing the matter in The Fifty Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, Ezra Goodman tells about conscience qualms suffered by his closest colleague at Time. Says Goodman, "Every morning before leaving for work, he would throw up."

A mid-Atlantic state

Walter Winchell
newspaper columnist

Time's inaccuracies are a staple of my column. My favorite about me was the Press Page skewp several years ago that a San Francisco chap was to inherit the aging lion's ( WW's ) col'm. Haw!

New York, New York

Sally Belfrage
author

In the Aug. 26, 1957, issue of Time, the following paragraph (under the heading AMERICANS ABROAD, a story dealing with 42 students who traveled to Red China) appeared:

. . . Sally Belfrage, 17, raised in Manhattan by her British father, Cedric Belfrage, editor-in-exile of the Communist National Guardian who was deported from the U.S. in 1955 and who now works for Moscow Radio. Sally is touring Communistland at the behest of devoted father Cedric "to absorb both Eastern and Western atmosphere."

I was not 17, but 20. I was not raised in Manhattan, but in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., where my neighbor was, interestingly enough, Essie Lee, chief of the Time researchers who allegedly check their copy painstakingly for accuracy. The National Guardian was and is not "Communist" but progressive; it was first begun in support of Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential campaign. My father has never worked for Moscow Radio in the most distant capacity. I went entirely on my own, at no one's "behest," in order to collect material for a book, A Room in Moscow, which was published in the U.S. by Reynal in 1958. The quotation is the product of someone's imagination. Unfortunately the only achievement in accuracy was the spelling of my name, which was sufficient to make the rest of the smear stick.

New York, New York

John Osborne
playwright

Time's coverage of things from England is often appalling, not only because of its indecent bias but for its treacherous inaccuracy. I have twice started litigation against them. In addition to their penchant for libel, their editors are possessed of a compulsion to be clever, even at the expense of truth. Typical is the following pun from Time's review of my play, Luther: "In the end, it is to the level of scatology, not eschatology, that Dramatist John Osborne has reduced one of the most dramatic religious events since the Crucifixion." In short, Time is a vicious, dehumanizing institution.

London. England

Eric Bentley
author and critic

You might want to look up Time's review of a book of mine in their Dec. 29, 1947, issue. Their method is well illustrated there in such a phrase as this:

"[Shaw's] plumping for 'eugenic breeding' (which Bentley, with restraint born of love, euphemizes into 'idealistic racism') . . ."

Reference is to my Shaw, p. 54. Anyone who looks this up will find that I did not call eugenic breeding "idealistic racism" but quite clearly distinguished it from "idealistic racism"! (I called both "fantastic remedies.")

And so on and so on.

More pervasive than Time's outright errors is the misuse of truth. To lie without lying seems their general aim.

Also they are opportunists. Compare their contemptuous dismissal of Brecht in an obituary of merely eight lines (Aug. 27, 1956) with their raising him to importance, as if they'd known all along, several years later (see their review of Threepenny Opera, followed by their reviews of Seven Plays of Brecht).

It is also worth watching when murder is on their minds. See the recent lashing out at Lillian Hellman in their review of her film.

Lack of Charity Dept.: Their report of Virginia Woolf's suicide. It was almost a satire.

New York, New York

Vincent Price
actor and art collector

Time, Jan. 25, 1963, did a story on an art buying trip to Paris that I made in behalf of Sears, Roebuck. As usual, Time was snide and derided my purchases as "the works of unknown Sunday painters," when in fact they included 200 lithographs by Chagall, 80 first-rate aquatints by Goya, ten etchings by Rembrandt, and hundreds of others by Picasso, Miro, and Daumier, plus oils, gouaches, and watercolors by Leger, Vlaminck, Dufy, et al. The irony is that at no time did anyone from Time see the paintings. Fortunately, most people today read Time for laughs and not for facts.

West Los Angeles. California

H. Allen Smith
author

The inaccuracies of Time are as numerous as the sands of the Sahara. For instance, when a long series of humorous weather stories I did for the New York World-Telegram attracted their molasses-slow, rhinoceros-heavy attention, they wrote it up with about eight errors of fact in a single column of type!!!

Mount Kisco, New York

John McClellan
United States Senator (Arkansas)

I regard Time as prejudiced and unfair in its reporting.

Washington, D.C.

Taylor Caldwell
author

I could write a whole book about inaccuracies in Time. When I call Time utterly poisonous. I am being conservative.

Let me give you an example. In May, 1947, Time did a two-page story on me, full of vituperation, hatred, and lies. Time said I was ignorant, practically illiterate, and that my fiction 'is never above the intelligence-level of the most stunted book-buyer." The fact is that I am a university graduate, winner of literary awards from all over the world. Andre Maurois has described me (perhaps too generously ) as "the female American Balzac." Time said I came from a lower-class, uneducated, immigrant family which "disapproved of educating women." The truth is that my artist family sent me to the very finest of schools in England and surrounded me with books, music, and art. My ancestors include the founder of a university, the president of a publishing firm, and numerous distinguished clergymen, writers, and scholar`. going back to the time of George Washington. Time quoted me as saying, "I never do research because it would spoil the fun." This is tin utter and complete fabrication. I never made any statement of the kind and, in fact, I sometimes spend years researching a novel. The author of the Time article implied in one paragraph that I did not even write my own books.

I was curious to find out who had written this incoherent and almost insane diatribe and after some investigation I discovered that it was non: other than Whittaker Chambers, who was then book editor of Time. Imagine the gall of that ax-Communist! He had even gone so far as to label me a "reactionary." I often wonder not only about the veracity of his book, Witness, but also about his court testimony against Alger Hiss. whom I am not defending, you will understand. I wrote to Chambers five times asking why he had attacked me so maliciously but the bastard never replied. The horror of it is that excerpts from Chambers' ridiculing article keep reappearing in the press after nearly 20 years.

Then, in February, 1959, Time's sister publication, Life, sent a reporter to see me. My husband, fearing more lies by the Time-Life combine, at first refused to let him in. But the reporter threatened to use "all the bad publicity your wife has received over the years," so we consented to the interview. It lasted for three whole days and the reporter took back copious notes, but when the story appeared wouldn't you know that Life repeated every single lie that Chambers had written!

My friend Edna Ferber wrote to Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce in outrage. Mrs. Luce then wrote to me saying she, too, was "outraged" by the lies of some of the "wretched persons" on her husband's staff. "Let's both exercise all the Christian charity we can and rise above it," she said. "You'll rise again. I'll now have time to read your books and you'll have one new fan. That's not adequate compensation, of course, for the hurtful things said about you in Life."

The Luce magazines have never stopped their abuse of me but at least Mrs. Luce has acknowledged that they are "hurtful" and full of lies. My friend, Alexander King, who worked for Life, hates the whole Luce organization and grows profane when mentioning it. You can't separate Time from Life. Through them both runs the bad blood of Henry Luce.

Buffalo, New York

David Merrick
theatrical producer

As far as I'm concerned there is not a single word of truth in Time magazine.

New York, New York

Leonard Rowe
attorney and educator

I'm an avid reader of Time, but don't for a minute think I've been buffaloed by Henry R. Luce's personal editorials masquerading as news. My interest is purely professional.

As a teacher of semantics and propaganda analysis, I find Time indispensable as a sort of laboratory manual and clinical exhibit for my classes. Granted there are any number of books on propaganda; but the general contents too often suffer from academic dryrot.

Before I discovered the usefulness of Time, I used to invent hypothetical examples based on recent news and current topics to explain to my students such classic propaganda devices as false identification of the writer with the reader, the "bandwagon appeal," the ad hominem argument, the "black-and-white" interpretation of complex issues, distortion by lifting text out of context, distortion by the calculated omission of relevant facts, and distortion by sly juxtaposition.

Then, on Feb. 23, 1959, The New Republic published a journalistic tour de force, Ben H. Bagdikian's expose and analysis of Time's chronic slantings: "TIME-Study: Accuracy in a Weekly Newsmagazine."

In the course of but seven blistering, excoriating pages, this article made me throw my own examples to the wind and use Time as Exhibit A to illustrate the shabby tricks used to subordinate facts to the prejudices, predilections, and antipathies of Time's publisher, Henry R. Luce.

At the same time I discovered another excellent study made by UAW Ammunition (official publication of the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America) in its issue of December, 1956, entitled "How Time, Life and Newsweek Covered the Campaign."

The argument and conclusion of the U.A.W.'s study:

The sanctimonious Mr. Luce, publisher of Time and Life, most especially is guilty of hypocrisy . . . his magazines are masterpieces of bias.

They snigger rather than laugh. They rarely strike but they often stab. They are mean-spirited and vindictive. They are unctuous and patronizing.

. . . If students and teachers continue to read these periodicals, we hope they will read them for what they are unofficial organs of the Republican Party and spokesman for a big-business point of view.

Thenceforth, instead of racking my brain to contrive examples of slanted, manipulated, and masturbated news, I merely read Time every week, particularly the first 10 or 12 pages of national politics and foreign news, where the manhandling is always at its blatant and flagrant worst.

Behold how Time prepares the reader to accept with due reverence the platitudes of the Republican candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower (Time, June 18, 1956):

Head bare under a hot sun, Ike welcomed his youthful guests, admonished them to search for truth and apply it, reminded them that political parties must be dedicated not to the seizure of power but to ideals.

As for a Democratic candidate, Time prepares its readers to give the rascal the contempt he deserves (Time, Sept. 17, 1956). The doghouse treatment of Senator Estes Kefauver begins by labeling him the "Professional Common Man." This, of course, means that he is strictly a phony. Time quotes an unidentified friend (and what a beautiful example of smearing by unattributed quotation: Time's contribution to slanted journalism the one-man cross section as saying of the Democratic Senator that "he is the type of fellow who, if he was out campaigning and came across a farmer pitching manure, would take off his coat, grab another pitchfork and start to work." Then Time delivers the knockout punch: "This week, pitchfork in hand, Vice-Presidential Nominee Kefauver was all set to start work on the key part of his Democratic campaign job....', A beautiful illustration of brainwashing the reader by subliminal impressions. Pitchfork. Pitching manure. Pitchfork in hand. And now the reader, both on the conscious and on the unconscious level, gets the impression, believes, feels in his very bones, that this phony, Kefauver, posing as a yokel, wasn't really campaigning: He was slinging horse manure at the voters.

Time continues the assassination: "Kefauver's poor-mouthed Southern drawl . . . a pen" chant for Wilsonian liberalism . . fuzzily expressed . . . his enormous, ever-present brief case, stuffed with all the items that long campaign experience has taught him he needs: an extra shirt (he perspires heavily) . . ."

Subliminal impression: Republicans are clean and immaculate, always freshly bathed, smelling of expensive aftershave lotions. But this Kefauver guy like most Democrats stinks of horse manure and sweat and B.O.

Now, let's see how Time treats another political personage, depending upon whether he is consorting with blessed Republicans or with accursed Democrats:

Time, Aug. 12, 1946, on the character of George E. Allen under a Democratic administration:

Last week . . . the President [Truman] eased his croniest crony, George E. Allen, into the Board of Directors of the onstruction Finance Corporation.

And, some seven months earlier, Time's issue of Jan. 28, 1946, this less-than-glowing tribute was paid Mr. Allen:

George is all the more remarkable because, to the naked eye, he is a clown.

But in the theology and metaphysics of Timeparticularly since Senator Joe McCarthy of hallowed memory revived the concept of Guilt by Association there is Innocence by Association, especially if that association be with Holy Republicans. And so, in Time of Dec. 14, 1954, George E. Allen, erstwhile "clown" and "croniest crony" of stinking Democrats, is now beatified:

Last week . . . the President [Eisenhower] chatted quietly with . . . golfing companion George E. Allen, Washington lawyer and friend of Presidents.

Time's abuse of Adlai Stevenson when he ran against Mr. Eisenhower in 1952 is legendary. Before the campaign, Stevenson was described by Time as Illinois' "good Governor" who was "dedicated to the . . . dynamic proposition that the U.S. is not a static pattern but an experiment among other things in good government." After Stevenson became a candidate, however, Time scoffed at his record as Governor and said, "He never so much as slapped the wrist of the Cook County Democratic Organization, the most corrupt and powerful of existing big-city machines."

Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania has charged that Time deliberately prints unflattering photographs of those it does not favor. He has said that such a picture of himself, with his mouth wide open, appeared in Time of March 16, 1959, in connection with an article on his budget proposals. "Balanced Budget Liberal Democrat Style," the story was labeled, and Time stated that "nowhere did Clark suggest where costs could be cut." Clark said on the floor of the Senate that this was an outright lie, and that Time had chosen to ignore his suggestions for economies. Senator Clark has inserted a huge collection of Time's inaccuracies into the Congressional Record, along with perhaps the most insightful statement that has ever been made about Time's inaccuracies:

If Time magazine were selling apple-sauce instead of a weekly publication, it would not be able to call itself, as it does, "The Weekly Newsmagazine," because me Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 requires that all such goods be labeled truthfully.

Cincinnati. Ohio

Karl Shapiro
poet

When I was editor of Poetry magazine during the first Stevenson campaign Mrs. Adlai was the chairman of our board Time printed a bit that said: to get a poem printed in Poetry you only had to pay the Modern Poetry Association $25 (chairman, Mrs. Adlai etc.). This was part of their anti-Adlai campaign. We got our lawyers together but it was too expensive for us to sue. It shocked even me.

This is a case of the Luces wangling America for all that it's worth. They used little stinking Poetry to help snow Adlai. Almost killed his old lady.

Lincoln, Nebraska

Mrs.Claude Dauphin
actor's wife

Time is slanted and biased. Its editors go out of their way to hurt people. Time's entertainment editor, a mean and contemptible bitch, once reviewed Betty Grable's return to night clubs and said, "The younger people in the audience wondered what their fathers had seen in her during the war." The same person also once said Mary McCarthy has a mustache, certainly does not. I could bore you to tears with similar instances of Time's cattiness. Its editors seem to need to compensate for their feelings of inadequecy by cutting down people who are defenseless against snipling

Paris, France

P.G. Wodehouse
author

Time is about the most inaccurate magazine in existence. They will write just about anything to be picturesque and amusing.

For instance, during the German occupation of France, when I was living in Le Touquet, they did a short squib on my internment by the Germans. They had me "throeing me a cocktail party in the jolly old pine woods at Le Touquet" as the German army was sweeping toward Paris. According to Time, all of us "revelers" were ceremoniously arrested and carted off--still in jolly goof humor. Can you imagine the bastards inventing an idiotic story like that? I've always wondered where I was supposed to have collected these light-hearted guests when, in fact, the resident population of the town had shrunk so considerably that even a determined host would have found it impossible to assemble the nucleus of a coctail party. And certainly no one was in mood for revelry. Furthermore, if one were to believe Time, the "party" would have had to continue fot two months, since there was that much time-lapse between the day the Germans arrived and the day I was interned! Apparently everyone believed that story because it had been picked time and again. It did me a lot of harm 20 years ago, and is still repeated often. It is embedded in the world's folklore--thanks to the inventiveness of one of Time's editors.

Remsenburg, New York

Rockwell Kent
artist and author

Time is too strongly inclined to the ultraright to be trustworthy in the forming of fair judgment in current political events. I feel itsstyle of writing to be objectionable and inclined to value smartness above truth.

No, I don't like Time, and just one year ago declined a friend's generous proffer of a subsciption.

Ausable Forks, New York

Burgess Meredith
actor

I have been aware of inaccuracies in Time for longer than I care to remember.

Pomona, New York

Eugene Burdick
author and educator

My disenchantment with Time started back in 1950. At that time I was at Oxford University and wrote a satirical piece on Oxford for the literary magazine. Time, by careful paraphrasing and omission, gave the impression that I was charging Oxford was full of homosexuals, miserable food, and sad lectures.

Later, Time reviewed and praised my book Fail-safe and in several subsequent issues quoted it, apparently with approval. Then quite abviously someone high up the ladder decided to give the book a blast. So the special section "Opinion" was introduced and a wild swinging attack made on the book. We wrote a long letter pointing out that, despite the information that Time had, they had deliberately misread the thesis of the book . They had really written an editorial in their news columns and a poor one at that. It purported, however, to be based upon "inside dope" from the Air Force. My personal view is that Henry Luce is very sensitive to anything mislead to disarmament. It is an honorable and, perhaps a viable view. But it should not be pursued with dishonest tactics. We also pointed out that the Strategic Air Command itself thinks that war by accident is possible and has a special group whick studies precisely that possibility. Also, Secretary McNamara will not associate himself with those who believe that war by accident is impossible. In any case, Time's argument were apid in the extreme.

In an end they cut our letter to pieces without courtesy of putting in the traditional three dots which indicates they have made an excision.

I might add that by pure accident I ran across somebody at Time who worked on the origianal story on us and our book. He reported that the article was written by direct orders from "up there" and that although most of the staff objected there was nothing they could do. This writer was sympathetic with the book but had a job to protect.

Berkeley California

Ernest Gruening
United States Senator (A laska)

In the Oct. 11, 1963 issue Time charged several Senators, including myself, with being "angry" over a Latin America military matter and then rebuked us for our anger when, in fact, we were never angry to begin with.

Washington, D.C.

Stringfellow Barr
educator

Of course, I regard Time as heavily slanted, but the most brazen misstatement of fact I caught them in occurred when I was president of St. John's College. At that time they did a careless (to say the least) report on the college's new curriculum, which centered on intensive study of the 100 greatest classics. Not only did they bestow upon me the honor of having chosen the great books (when, in fact, the list was substantially the same used for many years at Columbia University in its honors course), but in painstakingly listing the authors to be studied they made one important omission they failed to list the authors studied in the fourth year, which was devoted to modern thinkers and modern science. Time's editors proceeded to criticize the college for including "no modern thinkers, no modern science." In short, Time's readers were left with false impression that St. John's was preparing students for life in the Middle Ages. When ent a letter of correction to the editor, it was inted, but with an editor's note that accused me of "quibbling."

Princeton, New Jersey

Anonymous
best-selling novelist

I have given up keeping track of the errors and inaccuracies in Time, but I do know that whenever they are on a subject that I happen to be an authority on, they get something wrong. They are very very skillful at suppressing parts of a story which, if included, would give an entirely different over-all (and true) impression. They are a bunch of dirty bastards with the morals of a Brazilian goat I mean ethics.

Please do not use my name they still must review my books and believe me they do not forget insults. I am still chicken enough to stay on their good side. That probably makes me as repulsive as they are.

Southern New England

Conrad Aiken
poet and critic

I do feel and have felt for many years that Time slants its news. In addition, some years ago Bernard Auer, who holds the title of publisher, asked me to assess Time's book-review section. I criticized its selection of titles and damned its smart-aleck style. Time has not reviewed a single book of mine since

Brewster, Massachusetts

Marshall McLuhan
professor, University of Toronto

The overwhelming fact about Time is its style. It has often been said that nobody could tell the truth in Time style.

Time is a nursery book in which the reader is slapped and tickled alternately. It is full of predigested pap, spooned out with confidential nudges. The reader is never on his own for an instant, but, as though at his mother's knee, he is provided with the right emotions for everything he hears or sees as the pages turn.

The complex issues of politics and international relations are reduced to a newsreel, with accompaniment by Spike Jones. Biographer Noel Busch has said that the march of events in Time, instead of resembling a ragged mob shuffling down the side street of perception, becomes a glittering parade with flags waving, bands playing, and the ranks keeping step. Time's readers are the enthusiastic kids lining the curbs as Time marches on. Totalitarianism engendered by the mass hypnosis of power, glitter, and the spectacle of regular ranks rather than insight or intelligibility is the object of all of Time's technical brilliance. Meanwhile, the editors of Time stand at mock attention in the reviewing stand, thumbing their noses at humanity.

Toronto, Canada

Howard Fast
author

Any reading of Time, even casual, will provide you with distortions and inaccuracies by the bushel.

New York, New York

Frank B. Morrison
Governor of Nebraska

Time's coverage of the latest gubernatorial election in Nebraska was clever and well-written, but it had practically no connection with truth. In fact, it is not too much to say that Time's coverage consisted mainly of pure lie and fiction.

Time said I was ashamed of affiliation with the late President Kennedy. That is a lie. Time said that I "persuaded Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman to cancel a scheduled talk at the National Corn Picking Contest in Grand Island" to further disaffiliate myself with the Kennedy Administration. That is pure fiction.

The editors of Time said my opponent could not quite bring himself to match Morrison's sloppy suits and exposed suspenders." The fact is that I do not wear exposed suspenders. This point is petty, I admit, but I bring it up to show the maliciousness of Time's editors and the ends to which they will go when ordered to do a hatchet job on a Democrat.

Lincoln, Nebraska

Irwin Shaw
author

Long ago, a bright young man came out of Yale determined to establish a magazine nastier than any other magazine of the day. Unhappily for us all, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The bright young man was Henry Luce, of course, and the magazine was Time.

A few years after it first hit the stands, a friend of mine described it in terms that are still valid for today. "Time," he said, "seems well-informed on any given subject, as long as you know nothing whatever about that subject yourself."

As any faithful reader of Time should know, I wrote and co-produced a movie called In the French Style (Time, Oct. 11, 1963). The review, to say the least, was not one to warm the cockles of a writer's or a producer's heart. In fact, it was so bitter and personal that I was asked by friends just who was my enemy on the staff of the magazine and what I had done to drive him into this self-revelatory performance.

I don't know who my enemy on Time is (my guess is that there are three or four hundred ladies and gentlemen on the staff who could qualify for the title), but I do know of one or two acts of mine which were not designed to endear me to the magazine's editors. One such act was performed last summer, a few weeks before In the French Style was due to open in New York. It was a sunny morning, calm and clear, but I was in a rage. I telephoned my partner in the making of the picture, the director Robert Parrish, and asked him to come over to my house because I was going to do something that could not conceivably contribute to the success of our picture and was almost certain to do it some harm. Since we were to share the benefits that might accrue from the film, he had a right to know the dangers I intended us both to risk. When he came over I gave him the following pages to read:

A Private Letter on a Public Subject

Died. Clifford Odets, 57, a social-protest playwright during the Great Depression (Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing), later a highly paid writer of slick movie scripts (Sweet Smell of Success); of cancer; in Los Angeles. The contrast between Odets' early proletarian dramas and his Hollywood work inspired the celebrated jab, "Odets, where is thy sting?" Time