JTA Takes Issue with Herald Tribune Report on ‘goldwater, Anti-semitism’

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked the New York Herald Tribune today to publish a correction of assertions made in a Herald Tribune syndicated column earlier this week, to the effect that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had accused Senator Barry Goldwater, Arizona Republican, of anti-Semitism. The charge was made in the Rowland Evans Robert Novak column, published by the Herald Tribune on August 21. The 47-year-old news agency asked the Herald Tribune to send the correction to all newspapers publishing the Evans-Novak column.

The Herald Tribune columnists charged that “Liberal Jewish sources are implying nothing less than anti-Semitism to Goldwater himself. ” The attack on the Conservative Republican they said, came in “a dispatch by the influential and liberal Jewish Telegraphic Agency.”

The implied theme of this dispatch the columnists said, was that “Goldwater is trying to appease the anti-Semites by becoming one himself. ” The “sole source” for this charge, they said, was that “Goldwater is trying to appease the anti-Semites by becoming on a Washington radio station on July 25 criticizing the Jews for their alleged support of the Democratic Party.

The Evans Novak report was based on a column by Milton Friedman, JTA Washington correspondent, released by JTA a week previously to English-language Jewish newspapers throughout the country.

LIPSKY DENIES IMPUTED POLITICAL PARTISANSHIP; CITES ‘JOURNALISTIC FAIRNESS’

Eleazar Lipsky, president of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, denied charges of political partisanship imputed in the Herald Tribune column. He said:

“The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is an impartial, objective news service reporting developments honestly and accurately. It is neither Democratic nor Republican. Mr. Friedman’s column was a fair and objective statement of the facts. Mr. Friedman’s interpretation of these facts was well within the limitations on comment imposed on reporters.

“Mr. Friedman did not accuse Sen. Goldwater of anti-Semitism, as a careful reading of his column will show. He did quote a responsible Jewish source as characterizing the position taken by Sen. Goldwater as one of ‘appeasement of his detractors at the expense of the Jewish community.’ The editors of JTA are aware of the identity of the official who made this statement, and are satisfied as to his qualifications to pass this judgment.

“Mr. Friedman did not, as the Evans-Novak column implied, assert that it was Sen. Goldwater’s statement that the Jews supported the Democratic Party that ‘shocked persons of the Jewish faith.’ What many Jews have found shocking is Sen. Golwater’s identification of Jews with a party which he described–in his own words as one which ‘opened the doors wide to Communism all over the world’ and which, in the Senator’s words, made treaties ‘that have allowed their own people, the Jewish people, to suffer the throughout pogroms and anti-Semitism all over the word.’

“Journalistic fairness should have impelled the Herald-Tribune columnists to give the full quotation. It should also have deterred them from seeking to create the impression that the JTA correspondent had seized on an isolated case of Sen. Goldwater speaking out on the American Jewish community. Sen. Goldwater has made a series of statements criticizing American Jews for alleged support of the Democratic party. His most recent statement on this issue was made this week, on August 19, when he addressed a student seminar in Washington sponsored by the Republican National Committee, and repeated his complaint.

“Before writing his column, Mr. Friedman sought an interview with Sen. Goldwater to give him the opportunity to review and clarify the remarks he made in his July 25 broadcast, which Mr. Friedman intended to quote. The Senator’s office, however, declined to arrange an interview. “