Facts-Forum Facts

In the Washington bureau of the Providence morning Journal (circ. 45,767) and evening Bulletin (145,255), Bureau Chief Frederic W. Collins got a routine offer. He was invited to appear (for $125) on a TV interview show put on by Facts Forum, a nonprofit, "nonpartisan, nonpolitical educational organization." Newsman Collins made a quick check of Facts Forum, turned down the offer and wrote a story suggesting that Facts Forum is "not all it appeared to be." The Journal-Bulletin did not let the matter drop; they assigned Reporter Ben H. Bagdikian, 33, to a two-month investigation of Facts Forum. Last week, in a Page-One, eight-part series, Reporter Bagdikian showed that Facts Forum is less a nonpartisan educational foundation than one of the biggest private political-propaganda machines in the U.S.

The mystery man behind Facts Forum: Dallas' H. L. (for Haroldson Lafayette) Hunt, 64, who "may be the richest man in America," with an income from oil, natural gas and farmland estimated to be more than $200,000 a day.* Oilman Hunt is so shy of publicity that he is rarely photographed and his name does not even appear in Who's Who in America. He refused to see Reporter Bagdikian, but he did talk to him over the phone and answered some written questions. As a "nonprofit national educational organization," Hunt's Facts Forum is tax exempt, and Hunt's contributions are deductible from his personal income tax. Furthermore, Facts Forum's radio-TV programs, run as a "public service," thus get more than $1,000,000 a year in nationwide free time (it has only a few local sponsors).

The Outlook. In less than three years, reported the Journal-Bulletin, Hunt has built Facts Forum into an organization with 125,000 "participants," whose programs include: 1) a half-hour weekly radio-TV show, Answers for Americans (used on 22 TV stations and available to 360 radio stations), 2) two nationwide weekly radio broadcasts, State of the Nation (available to 315 stations) and Facts Forum's basic "both sides" programs (222 stations), and 3) a half-hour show TV-filmed in Washington (58 TV stations). In addition, Facts Forum's "public-opinion" polls go to 1,800 U.S. newspapers, 500 radio and TV stations and every member of Congress, while its monthly Facts Forum News goes to a mailing list of 60,000.

If Facts Forum were nonpartisan and educational as it claims to be, said the Journal-Bulletin, there would be little reason for people to quarrel with its activities. "One of the most admirable projects a man of wealth could undertake," wrote Bagdikian, "would be the stimulation of rational debate among Americans . . ."

But the Journal-Bulletin found that Facts Forum is hardly nonpartisan. It is used as a political megaphone for Oilman Hunt, who "feels that the Democratic Party, except for the Dixiecrat movement, is the instrument of socialism and Communism in this country, and that the Republican Party as presently constituted displays dangerously radical tendencies." The "both sides" programs, which are supposed to present impartially different views on public issues, sometimes do just that. But often, wrote Bagdikian, they are heavily weighted towards Facts Forum's own point of view, which is compounded of "isolationism, ultraconservatism and McCarthyism." In Facts Forum's view, any Government planning at all is "collectivism . . . responsible for all of the first-rate achievements of Communism in the U.S." Critics of Facts Forum's views are often charged with "subversion, betrayal and treason."

Although Hunt denies any direct connection with Senator Joe McCarthy, the Journal-Bulletin found that, more often than not, "half [Facts Forum's] basic program ... is devoted to [his] political philosophy," plugging his speeches or putting on speakers who describe McCarthy in such terms as "alongside of Paul Revere." Senator McCarthy's new wife, the former Jean Kerr, who has been his research assistant, helped set up a national Facts Forum TV program, along with Robert E. Lee. Three months ago, Lee, who is a close friend of McCarthy's and whose only communications experience is as Facts Forum's first national TV moderator, was appointed by President Eisenhower to the Federal Communications Commission. Although his appointment has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, one of Lee's first official acts was to vote in favor of granting Hunt a TV franchise in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The Polls. Facts Forum's "public-opinion polls" are no less partial than its air programs, reported the Journal-Bulletin. Although they are sent out to newspapers and radio stations as samples of U.S. public opinion, they are largely postcard polls of Facts Forum's own "participants" (to which only one in ten replies). Sample "yes or no" questions: "Are the pink segments of the press losing their power?" "Is Congress inadvisably abdicating its constitutional power?" "Did proCommunists in the U.S. bring about the Korean war?" Since most newspapers and radio and TV stations pay little attention to the polls, Facts Forum tells its members : "Some newspapers may not consider [them] news. They will know of your interest if you call or write them for results."

The public-opinion poll, says Reporter Bagdikian, is not a cross-section poll but merely what Facts Forum calls a device for exerting a "powerful psychological force for good" on news organs and members of Congress. Facts Forum has another device for getting space in newspapers ; it pays for letters to the editor. The Journal-Bulletin found that Facts Forum handed out $3,630 for published letters that expressed "isolationist or anti-U.N. or pro-McCarthy" views, while it paid only $439 for letters representing opposing views.

For members who are uncertain of answers to "loyalty questions." Facts Forum recommends the word of such authorities as the Rev. Dr. Carl McIntire, President of the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches, who has accused the National Council of Churches, which embraces most Protestant denominations, of pro-Communism. He has also called the U.S. Roman Catholic Church a "spy system . . . committed to a foreign power."

Facts Forum has used its platform as well as its own "free circulating library," reported Bagdikian, for "known race-hate agitators." One of the original library books, withdrawn after protests, was We Must Abolish the United States, by Joseph Kamp ("I pull no punches in exposing the Jewish Gestapo or any Jew who happens to be a Jew"). Kamp was jailed for contempt of Congress after refusing to reveal the backers of his Constitution al Educational League. Bagdikian also set forth that Facts Forum tells its members how to get on the mailing list of such organizations as Merwin K. Hart's National Economic Council, described by the Buchanan Lobbying Committee of the 81st Congress as a group that attempts "to disparage those who oppose its objectives by appeals to religious prejudice, often an ill-concealed anti-Semitism." In Manhattan, where a Forum unit v/as formed, the first meeting was addressed by Allen Zoll. whose American Patriots, Inc. was listed by the Attorney General as a "Fascist" organization. Zoll, said the Journal-Bulletin, charged that the U.N. is "a device to permit the colored races to rule the white races [and that] UNESCO is an alien conspiracy to teach sex delinquency to American schoolchildren."

The Net Effect. Facts Forum's Angel Hunt, who lives in a house that is a reproduction of George Washington's Mount Vernon home (but five times bigger), refused to tell Reporter Bagdikian what Facts Forum's annual budget is, claimed it has "strict rules against carrying on propaganda or attempting to influence legislation," and therefore deserved its tax exemption and free radio-TV time. But Reporter Bagdikian vigorously disagreed, said that the "operations of Facts Forum have often exhibited a spirit which is the opposite of free debate in good faith." Concluded Bagdikian: "[The] net effect [of Facts Forum] is to disseminate fear, suspicion and divisive propaganda . . . The results of this, if carried into the entire field of mass communications, could be to increase the pressures dividing segments of American society, to increase group hatreds and implant suspicions which did not exist before."

*Hunt, the Journal-Bulletin said, put up 95% of the money to start Facts Forum. Among the members of its national board: Sears, Roebuck Chairman Robert E. Wood, Cinemactor John Wayne, Texas Governor Allan Shivers, General Albert C. Wedemyer, All-America Football Player Doak Walker.

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