Bert Lance, who resigned under fire last year as President Carter’s budget director, apologized last night for a suggestion that “Jewish ownership of the press” might be behind intense media coverage of oil-rich Arabs seeking investments in the United States.
Lance made the comment about Jewish ownership in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine last Sunday on Gaith Pharoan, a wealthy Saudi Arabian financier who helped Lance resolve a serious debt problem by buying Lance’s National Bank of Georgia stock for $2.4 million. Lance told reporter Margaret Shannon that multi-national investments have been “a strong part” of the American economy “for a long time.”
He added he understood the concern developing from growing Arab investment in American enterprises but said “circumstances have changed” and that “there is no special significance to the word ‘Arab.'” Then he said, “I don’t know whether all the hurrah stems from the great Jewish ownership of the press or not.”
After a two-hour meeting Monday with Charles Wittenstein, the Anti-Defamation League’s southern counsel and civil rights director, Lance agreed to clarify his remarks. He read a statement last night during his regular broadcast as a commentator for WXIA-TV here in which he rejected any statement “which would inflame prejudice and will continue to express my concern about the way in which any person is grouped or stereo-typed.”
Lance added: “In my conversation with the author of the article we had talked in great detail about foreign ownership of American assets and I voiced concern about our needs to combat and overcome prejudice. In the context of the conversation I did not perceive this (Jewish ownership) to be an offensive remark, and if to the contrary my statement offended anyone in any way what-so-ever I truly regret it. I sincerely hope that in no way such a statement would give encouragement to those who might feel any prejudice toward the Jewish people. It is neither relevant nor constructive to talk about the religious affiliation of people in the media or any other vocation or profession and that was the point I was trying to make.”
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