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From: cramer@SUN.COM
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re: Press Censorship - really Cockburn
Message-ID: <12233232784.16.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sat, 23-Aug-86 21:54:42 EDT
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Posted: Sat Aug 23 21:54:42 1986
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Both Jeff Myers and Larry Campbell seem to have missed the rather
elementary point that I tried to make regarding Alexander Cockburn.
Cockburn, currently a columnist for the Nation (among other
publications), was fired from his post at the Village Voice after it
was discovered by his editor that Cockburn was under a $10,000
contract with the Institute for Arab Studies.

The Institute, which incorporated in 1979 as a "scientific,
educational, cultural, and charitable organization", is a
psuedo-academic propaganda mill in the service of the anti-Zionist
cause.  It is active politically; for example, in September 1982 it
co-sponsored an anti-Israel demonstration in Boston.

In August 1982, Cockburn was given $10,000 by the IAS for research
which was to culminate in a book about the 1982 Lebanon war.  Cockburn
never wrote the book, and insisted, when the "research grant" was
discovered by his editor, that he was just about to give it back!
(This after holding on to the money for a bit less than a year and
half).

Now, what I was trying to suggest in my posting was that Mr. Cockburn,
who has written at length on the evil influence of filthy capitalist
lucre on the profession of journalism, may just be a bit of a
hypocrite.

This suggestion evidently confused Messrs. Myers and Campbell, with
Myers retorting "you must believe, Sam, that anti-capitalists should
just starve rather than make money", and Campbell, after finding my
writing "bizarre", asking

> What does "the influence of the evil capitalist system" (or decrying 
> same) have to with being hired by an Arab cultural organization for
> research?

Allow me to restate my point for the benefit of these gentlemen:
Cockburn accepted a non-trivial sum of money, which he did not
disclose to his editor, for doing "research" which was meant to end in
publication.  He has complained in the past of the pernicious effect
of money on American journalism.  He is a hypocrite.

This all seems straightforward enough to me; it may, however, be a bit
too unembellished for readers of the "Nation", accustomed as they are
to the lurid and byzantine tales of capitalist and imperialist
conspiracy which appear in that magazine.

PS: Mr. Meyers has asked for references on this matter.  I advise him
to take a look at the "Village Voice" of January 24, 1984 for the
editor's statement on Cockburn's suspension.
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