Section XII

When Media Records, which measures newspaper advertising, last week released its November figures for New York City, the Herald Tribune had piled up a nice Sunday gain on its competitor, the Times. Compared with November 1936, the Times lost an average of five pages of advertising each Sunday while the Herald Tribune made a fractional gain. Ordinarily such a record calls for prolonged professional crowing, but the Herald Tribune has been in no mood to crow since Sunday, November 21, when the paper carried as "Section XII" a 40-page glorification of Cuban Boss Fulgencio Batista's illiberal regime.

Section XII brought the Herald Tribune $32,000 from the Cuban Government and business interests. The U. S. Postal regulations require that when material of this type-is carried second class, it must be labeled Advertisement. This regulation caused the Tribune its first headache, since the section was merely announced as "written and presented by friends of Cuba." From the Post Office the Tribune got a warning, replied with an apology. From public opinion it received the most damaging attack that a U. S. newspaper has had to stand for since a Hearst photographer dangerously crowded Col. Charles Lindbergh's car to the curb on a hairpin curve three years ago, snapped a picture of Baby Jon.

The liberal press was, of course, warmest in its condemnation of Section XII. Said the Nation: "The Herald Tribune has got away with the publication of paid propaganda at a nice profit. The money that swelled its advertising revenue came out of the hide of an oppressed nation...." To which New Republic added: "It is a portrait which everyone informed about the situation in Cuba knows to be fantastically remote from the truth." The advertising director of the New York Times, in a confidential memorandum to his staff, which was picked up and reprinted by the Guild Reporter, recognized the moral obloquy involved in Section XII, also reported that publishers "protesting against the section are doing so on the principle . . . that paid-for news propaganda must not be included as legitimate advertising in figures sent to advertisers and agencies." Even the conservative Editor & Publisher warned that "the whole enterprise comes perilously close to the ethical line. . . . Commercial announcements, no matter what their object and no matter how pleasingly prepared, have no right to trespass on the space and the garb in which the public expects newspapers to print their own views and the authentic reports of responsible correspondents."

The man who earned the Herald Tribune this extraordinary headache was short, 68-year-old Rumanian-born Laurence S. De Besa, who claims his father was physician to the last Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II. Mr. De Besa first drew attention in the newspaper business five years ago when he went to Cuba to sell dictatorial Gerardo Machado the idea of running a special Cuban section in Hearst newspapers. Having sold the idea, Mr. De Besa adroitly sold the advertising space to Cuban interests, then collected and wrote a glowing account of Boss Machado & friends which appeared only in the Washington Herald. After similar activity on behalf of Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Santo Domingo, Mr. De Besa, flashing a setting of diamonds given him by dictators, slipped back into Washington as chief of a Dominican Republic News Bureau set up for him by Dictator Rafael Leonidas Molina Trujillo.

For his latest job for Boss Batista and the Herald Tribune, Laurence De Besa went back to the country which had long since banished his friend, Boss Machado. Undisturbed that ex-Sergeant Batista, who now runs Cuba with his army, was in fact the man who took greatest advantage of the Machado ouster, Writer De Besa soon was one of Batista's cronies. In the $32,000 worth of space in the Herald Tribune which he sold in Cuba, Mr. De Besa did not let his dictatorial friend Batista down. Wrote Mr. De Besa: "He will continue his role as the Great Emancipator of Cuba, as was our sublime Lincoln."

While he was working on the section in July the Cuban Government, "for relevant and humanitarian service," bestowed on Mr. De Besa the Decoration of Honor and Merit Grade of the Comendador. the same Cuban kudos given last month to Mrs. Ogden Reid, the publisher's ex-secretary and present wife, who runs the New York Herald Tribune.

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