George Seldes - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Seldes had both staunch admirers and strong critics. Some of Seldes' contemporaries and later historians have judged much of his work harshly. One critic thought I.F. Stone "was light years beyond Seldes." Others cited his political bias and preconceptions. A study of the Dies Committee said that Seldes' account in Witch Hunt suffered from his view that everything the Committee did was wrong. Another warned that The Catholic Crisis "should be read with great caution in view of the author's latent anti-Catholic and pro-Communist bias." Another cited Seldes as a writer with "an agenda." Still another evaluated Iron, Blood, and Profits as "less sober" than other works on the subject of international arms dealing. Of his biography of Mussolini, another wrote: "many of his sources were unreliable and his book was almost devoid of logical order." A more appreciative estimate said that Freedom of the Press was "one-sided, but well deserves careful reading."

Summing up Seldes' work, another wrote that "until 1947 followed the Stalinist line so closely that any author must use him with the utmost care."

A. J. Liebling said on him, "George Seldes about as subtle as a house falling in. He makes too much of the failure of newspapers to print exactly what George Seldes would have printed if he were the managing editor. But he is a useful citizen. In fact is a fine little gadfly, representing an enormous effort for one man and his wife.".

But a whole generation of journalists and activists were influenced greatly by Seldes. Long-time Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy said, "He was a reporter who didn't worry about being objective. He worried about what he would choose to write. I'm always amused when they call somebody 'one-sided'. Seldes offered one side – the side you weren't getting elsewhere". Nader said of Seldes, "He was like a doctor. He reported about disease in the political economy, and the gross inequities of power, and the abuses and the exploitation. I always wanted to be a crusading lawyer, and he gave me some materials to contemplate crusading about." Journalist Nat Hentoff said, "He took what should be the most honorable term in journalism - muckraking - and made it work again. A lot of journalists of his generation and the generation or two that followed, did more, took risks, because was the model. And the fact that he was there made them feel like whores if they didn't do more."