Up (Some) Rebels
SIR,—Mr. Kenneth MacKenzie's partisan feelings seem to have got the better of his logic. He asserts that because right-wing double standards exist I have no right to indicate and condemn left-wing double standards. Should it really be necessary for me to have to point out to someone who gives an educational institution as his address that all double standards are deplorable?
Mr. MacKenzie must be short of relevant argu- ments if he has to saddle me with responsibility for all the sins-real or imagined-of the British press. I must disclaim responsibility. But can anyone really be so ignorant as not to know why the British press-anti-Smith and pro-Smith-headlines Mr. Amery and ignores the ZANU and ZAPU repre- sentatives in London, and why, for that mauer, diplomats do in their reports, irrespective of their stand on the Rhodesian question? This is because what Mr. Amery and his supporters say or do is liable to affect events in some degree. The fact that Mr. Amery is an embarrassment to his own party leadership makes him particularly newsworthy.
Mr. MacKenzie is convinced, with Mr. O'Brien, that the British press by and large treats the US too well and the USSR too badly. Some years ago I participated in an analysis of British press, periodi- cals, books and political statements for the period 1934-53 which led us to the opposite conclusion. Like O'Brien, Mr. MacKenzie does not consider it necessary to make out a case, but considers asser- tion sufficient. Would he say that the pre-1953 British press turns out in retrospect to have painted Stalin blacker than he really was? Would he say that the British press leaned over to accommodate President Kennedy's first announcement on the missile sites and his policies of the following three days? Or are we being asked to assume that any- thing which shows Communism in a bad light and democracy in a good one is ipso facto 'complacent'?
ALFRED SHERMAN
London, SW I
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