Rep. Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio has lost his $250,000 libel suit against The Clarksburg Exponent, based on the paper’s publication of a “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column by Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen which accused Sweeney of anti-Semitism. Federal Judge Harry E. Watkins, in charging the jury, said the column “is furnishing not only interesting reading, but is rendering an important public service.”
The column reported in September, 1939, that Sweeney was the spokesman for Father Coughlin and that he had opposed the appointment of a foreign-born Jews, Emerich Freed, to the Federal bench in Cleveland. The jury held the column had told the truth.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
