News Analyst Lewis Hits Recent Editorial Against HUAC Film

Fulton Lewis, Jr., a news commentator for the Mutual Broadcasting Company, added his voice Tuesday night to that of the National Broadcasting Company's Roy Henley in protest of the CRIMSON's recent editorial on the movie Operation Abolltion. Henley criticized the same editorial on NBC's "Three Star Extra" Nov. 29.

In its Nov. 28 editorial, the CRIMSON charged that Operation Abolltion presented "a grossly distorted picture" of the student demonstrations against the House Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco last May. "For a department of the University both to present such a film uncritically, and to accept blithely (and print in the University Gazette) the description 'communist-inspired student riots,' is to use dangerous and irrelevant government propaganda in the guise of education," it said.

Lewis was most "interested" that one CRIMSON editor, as Lewis put it, "presum- ed that the writer drew most of his material for the editorial from a critical story about the film published in Reporter magazine, which is a left-wing periodical."

"Harvard, after all, is an important college campus, and there is evidence that other publications in left-wing ranks have used the Reporter magazine story as the foundation for their attacks against the film," Lewis said.

The broadcaster then cited the portion of the Reporter article by Paul Jacobs which quoted the sheriff of San Francisco County as saying, "There was no act of physical aggression on the part of the students."

Lewis said, "I undertook to call the sheriff of San Francisco County by long-distance telephone today, Sheriff Matthew C. Carberry, to ask him about the quotation, and do you know what he said: 'I did not make that statement. I do not know the author of that article Paul Jacobs, and have never spoken with him, and have never been interviewed by him.'"

Lewis further quoted the sheriff to the effect that "I was on the scene Thursday and Friday up to luncheon-time, when I went for luncheon with the chairman of the committee, Mr. Willis. The disorders took place during luncheon and I was in no position to know anything about them."

"It seems to me that's interesting," Lewis concluded, "because it serves as a commentary on the reporting of Reporter magazine and Reporter magazine's reporter, Paul Jacobs. And remember, the Harvard CRIMSON editorial, written by some schoolboy for campus consumption, was based largely on the Reporter magazine story, according to its editor."

The Reporter article also named Fulton ("Buddy") Lewis III as one of the House Un-American Activties Committee staff members who collected newsreel films by subpoena from West Coast television stations