Father Charles E. Coughlin made two surprising moves today when he offered three-quarters of an hour on his Sunday hour program for a Jewish reply to his assertions regarding the Jews and filed a $2,000,000 libel suit against the Detroit Free Press, which has been in the forefront of the attack on him for his anti-Semitic radio speeches.
The radio time was offered to the Jewish Community Council by Leo Fitzpatrick, manager of Station WJR, a close friend of the priest who arranged the independent national hookup for him. The offer provided that Father Coughlin speak the first 15 minutes to “answer certain charges made against him after his talk last Sunday.” Mr. Fitzpatrick said that Father Coughlin “will not touch upon any political, religious or ethical questions or any of the controversial matters of the last few weeks” in his own 15-minute talk.
(The offer was referred to the General Council of Jewish Organizations in New York, which-rejected it. Asked about the offer, Arthur S. Meyer of the General Council stated: “Naturally we are not interested in taking any part of Father Coughlin’s time. Should any arrangement be made for a radio speech, such arrangement will be made through the usual channels and in the usual way.”)
The libel suit, filed in the Circuit Court by Father Coughlin’s attorneys, Milburn and Simms, seeks $1,000,000 actual and another $1,000,000 punitive damages because of articles published in Monday’s edition of the Free Press. The paper, in a story concerning Father Coughlin’s charge that it had misrepresented a statement on refugees by Henry Ford, said that the priest “is giving still further evidence of his congenital inability to tell the truth.”
Father Coughlin had declared in his broadcast last Sunday that the Free Press printed the statement made by Mr. Ford to Rabbi Leo M. Franklin as a first-person interview. The paper replied Monday that it had at no time said that the declaration was an interview, but only that it was an authorized statement and went on to attack Father Coughlin for his speech
The consensus of Detroit Jews was against accepting Father Coughlin’s offer of radio time. This offer, together with the announcement that he would eschew “the controversial matters of the last few weeks” — meaning his attacks on Jews as supporters and Financers of Communism — was believed here to indicate that he was feeling the pressure of public protest and was seeking a way out of the difficulty.
A contributing factor in the rising opinion against Father Coughlin’s anti-Jewish campaign was an editorial in The Commonweal, Catholic weekly, which called him “a leading anti-Semite” and termed his recent radio talks “tendentious.”
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