Test of Confidence

Has a newspaper the right to fire a staffer when it learns that he has a Communist past? The New York Times thought so last fall when it sacked Jack Shafer, 44, a copyreader on the Times's Foreign Desk. The paper said that it lost confidence in Shafer after a subpoena from Senate investigators prompted him to admit party membership in 1940-41 and again in 1946-48, before he joined the Times. Quick to protest was the Newspaper Guild. Grounds for its protest : the dismissal was without "good and sufficient cause" and thus a violation of its contract with the Times.

Last week Arbitrator Edward Corsi, onetime New York industrial commissioner, later unhappy (four months) State Department immigration consultant in the Eisenhower Administration (TIME, May 2, 1955), upheld the Times. Ruled Corsi: "The Times's management has the right to be certain that the men who read, edit and headline the news will do the kind of job expected of them . . . [Managing Editor Turner] Catledge . . . expressed succinctly and convincingly the ingredients of the Times's loss of confidence in Mr. Shafer when he said: 'Not only must we be sure that the person who handles our [Communist] news is not proCommunist. We must be equally sure that he will not lean backward to prove that he is not a Communist or no longer a Communist.' Mr. Shafer could give the Times no such assurance, his record on the job notwithstanding."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.