Put Up or Pay Up

A dispatch published by Britain's vast (30 papers, 9,000,000 circ.) Kemsley newspaper chain made the London Daily Worker red right up to its Communist wattles. The story said that employment of youths on Yugoslav railway construction jobs was simply a cover-up for training an international brigade to fight in Greece. Exploded a Worker columnist: "Either the Kemsley press ignores reports by its correspondents and makes up its own foreign news, or its correspondent sends material which he knows to be false."

This was the kind of irresponsible charge that the Worker's U.S. counterpart in Manhattan often makes, and that the U.S. press usually shrugs off. But the biggest newspaper chain in Britain had the advantage of stricter English libel laws. Last week, sued by Kemsley and unable to prove its charge, the London Daily Worker abjectly backed down and ran a public apology. To be sure that the retreat would be widely noted, Lord Kemsley's Daily Graphic (circ. 761,668) ran it too, on the front page. The Worker had paid damages and apologized for "a grave libel on their professional integrity."

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