Editorial: ‘Investigate’ Pegler?
Westbrook Pegler has stolen one of his critics’ more potent weapons in discussing freely and frankly the facts concerning himself which any “investigation” of Mr. Pegler might be expected to uncover. He has done them one better, in fact, in pointing out that in all likelihood he has already been thoroughly “investigated” by persons who, as he said, “would not have neglected… to get something on me if they could.”
Mr. Pegler, who has done a right smart bit of investigating on his own hook through the years, unquestionably would profit from a public inquiry into his life, his connections, his methods and his income. The simple act of the matter is that he has kept all his professional operations on a high plane, and to have the opportunity to demonstrate that fact before some authority, in public, would confound his detractors.
There is, after all, nothing mysterious about what makes Mr. Pegler tick. He has succeeded by applying the fundamentals of good reporting: Accuracy and honesty. He works hard and long to get the facts, and, once he has them, has no fear about using them. He’d have been out of business years ago if he had adopted any lesser standard.
The methods of many Pegler critics are in many cases an admission of the accuracy of his facts, since they do not undertake to deny or challenge them. Instead, they usually attack by generalities and name-calling. One reader wrote recently:
May I also point out that the right of people to unionize is as much a basic democratic right as the freedom of the press. To attack one leaves the privilege of the other pretty much at stake.
If Mr. Pegler ever attacked “the right of people to unionize,” it escaped us, and we read his column pretty faithfully. Mr. Pegler does not attack the right to unionize, but, instead, has attacked union membership by compulsion, extortion of unreasonable fees and dues, union immunity from financial responsibility and downright racketeering and other abuses on the part of certain union officials.
Mr. Pegler doesn’t need our defense. His record speaks for itself. We don’t always agree with him, he doesn’t always agree with us. But we do agree with his opinion that for his “own practical purposes,” an investigation such as his critics propose but don’t insist on, “wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”