Abstract

Seeing Red at the Post

Presents an account of how Andrew McLaren, director of the Elisabeth Irwin (EI) High School in New York, and the author, an alumnus of the school, attempted to obtain an admission from Washington Post journalist Charles Lane that Lane's description of the EI as "Communist-influenced" in an article about the release from prison of former left-wing militant Kathy Boudin, was inaccurate. Reflections by the author, who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, on objectivity in journalism; Contents of a letter by Charles Lane to McLaren explaining why he believes his article does not require a correction; Charge that Lane conflates communists with Communists, and left-leaning progressives with Communists; Washington Post's refusal to print a correction or a full letter to the editor from McLaren; Author's memories of EI and its teachers; Charge that to arbitrarily inject as assumed fact a disputed accusation in the course of a news story about something else seems at best a dubious journalistic practice; Speculation over whether to call what Lane wrote about EI red-baiting or just bad journalism.