‘Truth’ Gets to the Heart of an Iconoclastic Journalist

George Seldes was cursed with the curse of living in interesting times. The great iconoclast of American journalism, a voice who couldn’t be stilled, he did more than cover every major story of the 20th century. He was, as press critic Ben Bagdikian notes, “an incorruptible man,” often the only writer willing to present the facts without fear or favor.

The inspiration and role model for I.F. Stone, Ralph Nader, Daniel Ellsberg and many others, Seldes is the subject of “Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press,” an informative and enlightening new documentary about the man Nat Hentoff called “the trombone of muckraking journalism.”

The heart of “Tell the Truth” (the title comes from one of Seldes’ 21 books) is the journalist himself. Interviewed in 1989, when he was a sharp and feisty 98 years old (he died at age 104), Seldes wears an “Aged in Vermont” button and delivers pithy observations about the life he led and the people he got in trouble with. Which was just about everybody.

Seldes and his brother Gilbert (who edited the classic literary magazine the Dial) were both raised in Alliance, N.J., a Jewish utopian agriculture colony. His idealistic father, a friend of Rosa Luxemburg and Maxim Gorky, taught him independence of mind and the philosophy he lived by: “Never compromise on great principles.”

Getting into trouble proved to be Seldes’ forte from his first major assignment, covering World War I. When he defied the armistice to travel behind the German lines and report on the human face of war, he infuriated Gen. John J. Pershing, who threatened to have him court-martialed.

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Next stop was the newly created Soviet Union, where Seldes’ dispatches were censored and he had to leave the country to write stories like the one headlined “Democracy and Freedom Are Dead in Red Russia.” After that it was on to Italy, where he was alone in recognizing where Mussolini’s fascism was heading (the New York Times was busy comparing Il Duce to our founding fathers) and got expelled for his trouble.

Seldes is best remembered today for starting In Fact, an investigative weekly that in its day had more circulation than the New Republic and the Nation combined. In Fact irritated the FBI by blasting the anti-communist witch hunt, and did the same to communists by running an early interview with Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito, an independent socialist.

In Fact was also one of the first publications to print, half a century ago, stories headlined “Tobacco Shortens Life,” attacking “a product that, when used as directed, kills its consumers.”

It was Warren Beatty’s “Reds” that reignited mainstream interest in Seldes, and led eventually to this documentary, produced, directed and edited by Berkeley filmmaker Rick Goldsmith.

Aside from the heartening footage of Seldes, the rest of this Susan Sarandon-narrated documentary is business as usual. It employs a considerable amount of archival footage, interviews with Seldes’ admirers, as well as devices like staged shots of fingers working busily on a manual typewriter. Its major miscalculation is using a too emphatic Ed Asner to read from Seldes’ writings.

Still any portrait of Seldes is bound to be an inspirational one, and “Tell the Truth and Run” certainly is. His lifelong lesson on the folly of taking authority at its word is one we ignore at our peril.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: a few still photographs of battlefield corpses.

‘Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press’

A Goldsmith Productions release. Director Rick Goldsmith. Producer Rick Goldsmith. Screenplay Sharon Wood, Rick Goldsmith. Cinematographers Stephen Lighthill, Will Parrinello, Witt Monts, Vic Losick. Editor Rick Goldsmith. Music Jon Herbst. Narrator Susan Sarandon. Voice of Seldes’ writings Ed Asner. Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

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