Contempt

Despite 75-year-old Publisher William Randolph Hearst, 74-year-old Los Angeles Times Publisher Harry Chandler is the pet antipathy of West Coast liberals. Yet last week, Los Angelenos who wanted to support their own concept of a free press found themselves also supporting rock-ribbed old Harry Chandler.

The stitches for this motley united front were basted in two months ago when the Los Angeles Bar Association charged the Times with contempt of court, citing editorials on court decisions published after the verdict but before the passing of sentence or other disposition. Two of the five editorials cited dealt with labor cases. One hailed the conviction of a group of C. I. O. sit-down strikers before the court had passed sentence; the other opposed a pending probation plea of two A. F. of L. members convicted of assault. When the Times published two editorials denouncing the suit as an attempt at press censorship, the Bar Association added them to its charge of contempt. All the editorials, the Bar Association claimed, were efforts to influence the court and interfere with the orderly administration of justice.

Before portly Superior Judge Emmett H. Wilson,--* known for his many labor injunctions, Times attorneys argued that no ordinary judge could have been unduly swayed, that the Times was exercising its constitutional right of free speech, that if comment were prohibited until every legal move were exhausted, what about the Mooney case--still going strong after more than 20 years?

When Times attorneys sat down, up rose a friend of the court, Labor Lawyer Abraham Lincoln Wirin, who stands for everything the Times opposes. "Attorney T. B. Cosgrove for the Times," began Friend Wirin, "said yesterday that he considers it the finest daily journal printed in the English language. I consider it the worst." From this Voltairian beginning, Lawyer Wirin, appearing in behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, went on to a long and earnest defense of the Times's right to print whatever it likes unless there is "clear and imminent" danger to the Government or the courts. A brief in support of the Times was also filed by the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (leftish).

Fortnight ago, Judge Wilson overruled almost all the Times's demurrers, ordered a trial. Some of his reasons: freedom of the press is subordinate to the independence of the judiciary; an article may constitute contempt even if the judge involved never sees it; the question is not what effect the article did have but what effect it might have had; contempt is committed if an article "places the judge in such a position that he will never know whether he was unconsciously biased by its publication"; a case is pending and cannot be commented upon while it is still open to modification, rehearing and appeal.

All arguments having been exhausted at the demurrer hearings, the trial last week was a mere formality. The Times-Mirror Co., Publisher Chandler and Managing Editor L. D. Hotchkiss were found guilty of contempt, fined a total of $1,050. Attorney Cosgrove, preparing an appeal, warned: "If the decision. . . is sustained, freedom of the press as it is known and as it has been practiced by the journals of the nation is gone forever."

--*In 1931 Judge Wilson refused a pregnant prisoner permission to leave jail and have her baby in a hospital. The Los Angeles Record ran his picture captioned "Dumbbell in Ermine." For the Record, there was no judicial reprimand.

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