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22 Oueslions01 Fairness IT IS A LONG HIKE to the offices of American Heritage, another long hike over these Manhattan streets, maybe a couple of miles, but I am in no particular hurry. It does not matter at all when I arrive. Because I will not be meeting with anyone at American Heritage, not the editor, not the managing editor, no one. I am being shut out of their offices. I am being given the Big Media Snub. I had hoped things would be otherwise. I have met with S. L. A. Marshall's critics whenever I can, Roger Spiller on my newspaper research trip, later David Hackworth, then Albert Garland and Harold Leinbaugh on this trip. I have corresponded with Charles White, too. I have thought it was my duty to hear them out, share some of what I have found, get their reaction, in the spirit of fairness. I am a firm believer in letting those on the other side have their say. That seems one of the most basic tenets of American journalism. So I intended to meet with the editors of American Heritage. I thought there were things we could discuss in person, even if we had already exchanged several letters in the past. The article in American Heritage had set off the Marshall controversy. The editors should be interested in any new information I had uncovered. I am a fellow journalist, not some media-baiting critic. I had written Richard Snow, American Heritage's managing editor , from the road and proposed a brief meeting when I got to New York: "After all the correspondence that has passed between us-and with my father, for that matter-I thought it might be intriguing for us to meet face-to-face and have a short discussion." 242 QUESTIONS OF FAIRNESS 243 But when I called Snow from New Jersey to set up such a meet~ ing, he said, "I'm not going to be meeting with you, on the orders of my editor." "Why?" I asked. "I'm not going to tell you. It's in my letter." "But I'm not at home to receive the letter-do you think per~ haps you could read the letter to me?" "No . . . . Well, all right." Snow left the line for a time, then came back and practically spit out the words of a letter that concluded: "My editor has asked me not to see you. He feels we have been extremely open, have spent an enormous amount of time responding to your letters and calls, and that, in the end, your intent has been hostile and destruc~ tive. We simply can no longer trust in your good faith." "OK," I said. We hung up. I wish I had been shocked by American Heritage'li decision, but I was not. It fit their pattern of behavior with their article and after~ ward. Every time that common journalistic practice, or even basic fairness, seemed to dictate a certain course of action, the editors at American Heritage did just about the opposite. They wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Post,lnteUigencer saying that my series on S. L. A. Marshall included "nothing to put a dent" in their article. The newspaper published American Heritage's entire letter without comment, as it should. Fair enough. I was prompted to write a Letter to the Editor of American Heritage, enu~ merating six errors of fact and fifteen misleading statements in their article-errors that included the work performed by Marshall's unit in World War I, the Army school he was attending at the end of the war, the extent of his newspaper experience after the war, his fa~ ther's occupation. I set forth such misleading statements as there is "no indication" that Marshall did "company~level interviews" during World War II, and that Marshall perpetuated "a peculiar hoax" with Men Against Fire, an assertion directly contradicted by even the mag~ azine's primary research source, historian Roger Spiller, who told me, "I know what 'hoax' means. That's why I didn't say that." And American Heritage's response to all this? The editors re~ fused to publish my Letter to the Editor. Too long, they said. So, I 244 RECONCILIATION ROAD wrote a shorter Letter to the Editor that conformed to the length the editors proscribed. They refused to publish my second letter. As edi~ tor Byron Dobell wrote to me, "You have entered a zone of...

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