Where I Stand—Classic Hank: Post earned reputation as a great newspaper

Friday, July 27, 2001 | 4:08 a.m.

Note to readers: Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, who died in 1989, was a prophetic, hard-hitting columnist who butted heads with world giants and demagogues and zealously defended the rights of the little guy.

Every week the Sun will run one of Hank's Where I Stand columns, recalling his finer moments as a chronicler of the late 20th century. We call this feature "Classic Hank."

TODAY: Services for longtime Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham were Monday. In this March 11, 1981, column Hank recalls how the Washington Post battled communist-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy, as Hank also had done.

One need not be learned in the head to do the right thing, but rather learned in the heart.

Good newspapers are learned in both places and that's what makes them good.

When the Washington Post printed a retraction on page two of a story in which this publisher was mentioned, it came as no surprise. The story kind of flippantly referred to me as arriving in Las Vegas with Bugsy Siegel, which was somewhat of an error because he came in 1939 and I did not hit this desert city until 1946.

Neither one of us had any knowledge of the other and certainly no identification with each other as we were in totally different stratas of business and social life.

When I wrote to Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, who happens to be a friend for whom I have some admiration, the correction immediately appeared in the Washington newspaper.

That is the reason the Post is one of the nation's fine newspapers and as such would not resort to the tactics of McCarthyism -- guilt-by-association and unfounded rumor.

When the infamous senator from Wisconsin was running roughshod over anyone who dared to question his motives, the Washington Post was in the forefront of those who had the courage to defy him.

Reporters assigned to Sen. Joe McCarthy traveled the "Red Beat" because a day would not go by without some accusation from the Red-baiting senator adding new names to his list of Communists whom he supposedly discovered.

The list was long and included anyone who disagreed with him, and most reporters just accepted his almost daily handouts, which named names and helped McCarthy destroy lives of people without checking whether there was any truth to his charges.

Murrey Marder, who ran the "Red Beat" for the Washington Post, was a different breed of newsman. He always asked about the accused names of the past to catch McCarthy in his almost psychotic lies and would not go along with his constant quest of dominating the headlines with false and malicious exposes.

Marder added an extra perspective to his stories by exposing the Red-baiting exposer to maximum scrutiny. He recognized that this was a dark moment in history and he attempted to pierce the black cloud that hung over the nation during this perilous period.

He refused to cover the story from day to day forgetting yesterday and he persisted in holding McCarthy to the record.

The Post stood behind him at much peril to itself because opposition newspapers were not above being called the local "Daily Worker" if they did not go along.

When the Wisconsin senator overstepped all bounds of recklessness by accusing the Army of harboring Communists, including some of the top brass, Marder asked the Secretary of the Army if it were true.

At this point the secretary, who had remained silent during this episode just as President Eisenhower failed to defend Gen. George Marshall against McCarthy's reckless charges, realized that Murrey Marder would not rest until the Army fought back.

The result was the Army-McCarthy hearing, where the vicious senator was publicly exposed for his false accusations and malicious lies.

The Army hearings became the catalyst for McCarthy's eventual downfall. The Senate hearings put the finishing touch on the Wisconsin Red-baiter when Washington lawyer, Edward P. Morgan, my tried and trusted advocate, wrote the final report which declared Sen. McCarthy had "perpetrated a fraud and hoax on the Senate of the United States." Ed was the special counsel to the Senate Committee and his report was a factual and literary masterpiece.

Ben Bradlee was a young reporter in the McCarthy era, and the task fell to him as managing editor of the Post to go ahead with the Watergate investigation or duck it like most newspapers of that period.

It's risky stuff for anyone, including a powerful newspaper, to take on a sitting president of the United States because it could be the road to instant oblivion.

Bradlee and his Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering a scandal that deposed President Richard Nixon and sent many of his top aides to prison.

Bradlee jeopardized the entire financial structure of the Post by forging ahead, but he never retreated and never let up.

His two reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, probably made more money out of the expose than Bradlee, but Ben had the reward that comes to all good editors. He did the job as he saw it and no one could deter him from his appointed mission.

By honoring my demand for a retraction, the Washington Post continues in the tradition of great newspapers whose editors are fearless in seeking the truth, and just as courageous in admitting a mistake.