To the editors:
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Never has this awesome power of the press and the extent of its range been brought into such sharp focus as when a car I was a passenger in was forced to stop by a vendor thrusting a Chicago Tribune at the windshield. (Gary Hart’s name was in the headline.) Like the Ayatollah Khomeini’s suicide children, kids wearing aprons with display newspapers strapped to their bodies dart in and out of traffic, defy and charge moving vehicles. If they can stop a car, the driver may be rattled or intimidated enough to buy a paper. This is truly an exercise in press freedom and free enterprise.
Those responsible control the medium from which they can editorially express incredulity, outrage, righteousness, and deny they had any intention of breaking the law or risking harm to anyone. But those kamikaze aprons worn by the vendors were not designed for home delivery kids.
The pseudonymity of J.J. Hunsecker is understandable. Violation of the oath of omerta concerning intramural media doings is at least as serious as it is with the mafia. There are occasions when the champions of the public’s right to know become stonemasons the equal of Mr. Nixon and Co. For instance, two years ago when the production workers struck the Tribune, the Tribune was accused of violating the Chicago Fair Labor Practices Ordinance that forbids importing strikebreakers. In a Chicago Sun-Times article, Barry Cronin quoted a Tribune employee as saying that strikebreakers from all over the country had replaced striking pressmen. Cronin wrote, “A Tribune official who last evening answered the telephone of company president Charles T. Brumback, but refused to identify himself, declined to comment.” Understandable reticence from the office of the president. The attempt to verify the anonymous quote by an anonymous employee was anonymously verified.
