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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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When I had the editorial read to me, I felt that it was not only a terribly poor editorial, just technically, but I felt that here we were coming out for Moynihan, having agreed not to come out for anybody, and the publisher was ordering this into the paper the very next day, and had also asked Fred to do a “minimum of editing,” I think the phrase was, do as little editing as possible on it.

Fred was absolutely outraged by the editorial, said he would have to put it in because he was ordered to do it, but he wouldn't touch the editing. He thought it was terrible, too, both substantively and in form.

So I said, “I'll have to call the publisher at once,” and I telephoned him just before lunch time and told him that I felt the editorial was absolutely unacceptable. He insisted on it going in. We never had an angry conversation about it, but we had a very firm conversation in which I said that I simply couldn't accept this, and I didn't see how he could order an editorial like this in. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and I felt that it was not proper to do this without at least some further discussion on it. He said, “Well -”

I said, “I have to do something about this,” and he suggested, “Well, maybe you would want to write a letter. We'll put it in and you write a letter.”

I first had suggested to him, “Look, if you want this editorial to go in tomorrow, why don't you sign it as a publisher's statement because I simply can't be responsible for this editorial. I think it's all wrong in form and I think it's all wrong in content.”





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