March 16, 1944

Notes of a Newspaperman

A newspaperman and radio reporter is as much a part of our political scheme as the statesman, politician and the dime-a-dozen misfits who make the news … As such the reporter should be subjected to just as many brickbats, slanders and innuendos… It is all part of the game, and anybody who can’t take it should not have entered into it in the first place. But by that same American code by which you are obliged to take it, you are also entitled to dish it out … Currently I am being vilified by being called a vilifier … I welcome the attack because it comes from the people I regard as the most contemptible that ever disgraced American citizenship. They believe that their own miserable self-interest is the destiny of this Republic. They think that freedom of speech is the right to lie about the president, that free enterprise means pre-war profits from government money and that the only thing the matter with Hitler is that he doesn’t pay cash … I repeat, I welcome their attacks. They cannot be expected to stick to the rules because they can never afford to stick to the facts.

From the St. Petersburg Times.