The Real Broad Street Bully

IN PHILADELPHIA, the mayor doesn't have to write a letter to the editor--if he doesn't like what he reads, he simply shuts the paper down.

That's the way Philadelphians I talked to last week viewed Mayor Frank Rizzo's unsuccessful attempt to kill a column strongly critical of his administration which appeared in the March 14th edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The publication of that column and the events that followed portend dangerous consequences for both the people of the nation's fourth largest city and editors who write about politics in every newspaper in the country.

The Inquirer has a recent history of tough city hall reporting. Its executives and beat reporters have sought to develop a healthy adversary relationship with the mayor and his aides. But Rizzo has not taken kindly to the way his chips have fallen in the local press. His disdain for the Inquirer and its evening counterpart, the Bulletin, is not concealed; he has not held a press conference in two years.

So there was nothing unprecedented about Rizzo's attempt to stop the Inquirer from running columnist Desmond Ryan's piece entitled "Our Mayor Speaks" a few days before its publication. The one-page article, billed as a hypothetical interview with the mayor in the table of contents of the Inquirer's "Today Magazine," portrayed Rizzo making derogatory comments about ethnic groups and homosexuals, and parodied his style of speech. The following excerpt with translation for those unattuned to Philadelphia's politics, shows how deep Ryan plunged his pen:

Anyway I got more on my mind what with eight million dykes tryin' to take over the police department. My police department where I been man and boy and so was my old man too...

That's what O'Neill (police commissioner Joseph O'Neill) says in the Peeper Paper ("The People Paper"--trade name for Philadelphia's third paper, the Daily News) the other day and that's one time the Mick was right. I mean who really wants broads on the police? What about you're having a fight with the wife and givin' her the back of your hand when the Polack down the street puts the squeal in. You want some bull dyke come chargin' on your property all ready with a swift kick in the lasagnas. No way. Not while I'm mayor.

But something unprecedented followed the article's publication. First, Rizzo hit the Inquirer with a $6-million libel suit claiming that the newspaper defamed his character and charging that it failed to indicate strongly enough that the interview was fictional. (He later testified that 25 to 30 persons, including his brother, Fire Commissioner Joseph Rizzo, had told him they believed the column was factual.)

But the libel suit was a minor slap in the face compared to the incident that followed. Five days after the article appeared, demonstrators from a building and trade union that has vigorously supported Rizzo in Philadelphia politics began assembling across the street of the Inquirer building at midday. By 3 p.m. enough men had gathered to block sidewalks and close off the Inquirer's entrances preventing delivery trucks from entering or leaving. The picketers carried signs saying "When is the Inquirer going to start telling the truth," and "The Inquirer is a biased paper." They closed their ranks tight enough as to make it dangerous to cross the lines.

At 5 p.m. an Inquirer photographer trying to cross the line was attacked while a squad of police plainclothesmen nearby looked on silently. Fifteen minutes later another photographer was beaten. Again the plainclothesmen did nothing. No arrests were made. When several Inquirer staffers then asked the plainclothesmen to help them pass, the police warned the staffers that they would be arrested for assault if they tried to push their way in. On the police radio came orders that all cars were to avoid the Inquirer building area.

Throughout the day and night Inquirer attorneys made pleas to Rizzo and Police Commissioner O'Neill to disperse the pickets. But there was no response from either man. Finally, after the paper missed its first two editions because pressmen and mailers could not enter the building, a local judge issued a restraining order against the demonstrators. Only after a city marshal posted the order at about 11 p.m. did the pickets leave the premises.

As if the intimidating tactics of the pickets weren't enough, Rizzo later defended the police's inaction by saying that they handled the dispute as they would any "labor matter." The union that surrounded the Inquirer building had no contractural relationships with that paper. Furthermore, Rizzo excused the police because he claimed they were hamstrung by a federal court ruling against police who arrested demonstrators at a Nixon rally in Philadelphia in 1972.

Philadelphians haven't been silent about Rizzo's behavior since the demonstration. Sam S. McNeel, president of Philadelphia Newspapers which owns the Inquirer, called the action "outrageous and beyond belief." He said "It is also beyond belief that the police would stand by and do nothing to stop this violence prior to the time a court injunction was issued." Several prominent Philadelphians, including former mayoral opponent Charles Bowser plan to circulate a petition in a few weeks calling for recall of the mayor. The chances of this tactic succeeding are small. A petition to recall requires 150,000 signatures all of which can easily be challenged. Each signee must give extensive information about his whereabouts including ward and telephone numbers. I spoke to people in several wards of downtown Philadelphia last week who said they feared physical retribution if they signed the petition.

Probably far more important than anything coming out of the recall campaign will be effect the libel suit and lawless mob will have on future coverage of Philadelphia and other cities' politics. If adversary relations stay tough, will there be future demonstrations and shutdowns by politicians' goon squads? Will papers feel free to satirize public officials if Rizzo wins his $6-million suit?

It's possible to believe that such a strong reaction to the printed word is peculiar to Philadelphia. Rizzo has built a substantial machine which includes the police and trade unions as components. The nation's press, however, has a habit of sharing intimidation. And if Philadelphia's newspapers, out of fear of recriminations, start letting the chips fall in Rizzo's favor, it's possible that other politicians may also begin to prefer the mob to the letter to the editor.