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Show THE Fditor News-(Continued from preceding page) I believe your candor should be extended to inelude the following admissions on your part: That the Deseret enemy of collective News is an bargaining inveterate and labor unions. That it does not permit collective bar- gaining to exist in its own establishment. That it makes itself a spokesman for the most violently anti-collective bargaining elements in the community. That in its recent handling of news attending the proposed strike by the so-called “Independent Association of Mill Workers”, the News failed to give space to statements of legitimate labor organizations—to-wit, the CIO and the AFL—affected by the proposed strike. That in its editorial in which it extolled the alleged patriotism of the would-be strikers, the News refrained from explaining that the purported patriotism did not come to the surface until after the United States Army had coldly notified the trouble-makers that a strike at the Magna-Arthur mills “would be intolerable’”’. That while other dailies, on the first day, printed the full text of the statement by Charles A. Graham, chairman of the Nonferrous Metals Commission, you deleted his assertion—the most newsworthy in the entire dispatch—that the threat to strike was “little short of treason”, and you published references to Mr. Graham’s comment on the following day only when publication no longer could be avoided. That instead of chiding the would-be strikers, you joined them in assailing tribunals of the United States Government, all because of your hatred of collective bargaining and legitimate unions. Your admissions should include the premise that not only did you resort to one-sided and biased news reporting, and similar editorials, in the Copper strike case, but that your treatment of labor news in that acteristic of your treatment In other words, on your part instance is char- of all labor news. I believe that an admission of bias and unfriendliness to- SEARCHLIGHT ward collective bargaining, and vour habit of one-sided presentation of labor news, would give your readers a more accurate appraisal of the unfairness and partiality of your news stories and your editorials. Your readers would be helped to arrive at a closer approximation to the truth. Certainly such an admission would enable them to estimate the worth of any one-sided comments you may make after my formal presentation of our case, which you have invited me to make. There are aspects of the case against HB 168 that will require consultation with other labor officials because not all of the provisions of HB 168 were directed against the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers, whom I represent in District 2, And I want my formal statement to be broad enough to cover the case for the entire labor movement—CIO-AFL-Railroad Brotherhoods—so that you thereafter will be precluded from attacking any unit of organized labor because of any omissions that I might make through lack of familiarity with the problems of individual organizations. However, I shall endeavor to hasten those consultations as much as possible, and at the very earliest opportunity I will hand you my formal statement in opposition to HB 168. At that time I shall also avail myself of your offer to designate that part of the Deseret News in which you will publish that statement. With regard to name calling, against which you caution me in my formal presentation of the case against HB 168, I seem to recall a few choice epithets, directed against union members and officers, torial page that have with appeared on your rather unpleasant edi- regularity. 'Those names include ‘‘Racketeers’’, ‘‘Bums’’, ‘*Hoodlums’’, ‘“Stiffs’’, and other terms of endearment that have served to betray the ani- mus of your publication and particularly its editorials, toward the organized workers. In view of vour own persistence in calling those, and other names, I suggest that, before you admonish me you give heed to the injunetion of the Messiah: ‘‘Let him that is without sin east the first stone.’’ Very truly yours, DAN EDWARDS, President District 2, International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers. |