A Critic's Rights

How much may an editor properly change a review to be run under a critic's byline? Last week in London, this question was put to a test by Tom Hopkinson, free-lance writer, novelist and onetime editor (TIME, Sept. 15, 1952). At the request of Herbert Gunn, 50, editor of Lord Rothermere's racy tabloid Daily Sketch (circ. 804,541), Hopkinson reviewed Front Page Story, a British movie melodrama with a Fleet Street background. After sending his review to the Sketch, Hopkinson was called by a subeditor and asked if one word might be taken out of the review. "What word?" asked Hopkinson. "You say, 'It's not a great picture,' " answered the subeditor. "Would you mind leaving out the word 'not'?" Hopkinson summarily refused, but agreed to make other minor changes.

The Sketch printed the review and without consulting Hopkinson added several sentences to the effect that the film was "sure and faithful in its ... technical and atmospherical detail." Author of the changes was Editor Gunn, whose wife Olive Gunn had been the technical adviser for the film. When he saw the review in print, Hopkinson promptly protested to the Sketch, received a letter of apology from Gunn in which he said that he had intended to run the review without Hopkinson's byline, but it was mistakenly left on. Hopkinson took his complaint to Britain's year-old but already moribund Press Council, a group of 25 newsmen and publishers who are supposed to act as "watchdogs" of the British press. Last week, for the first time, the watchdog stood up and really bit.

Ruled the Council: "[Gunn's] actions . . . have fallen below the best journalistic standards . . . The Council gives its complete support to the principle that a critic has the right to insist that where his name is to be published with an article, no alterations [apart from normal copy editing] should be made without the sanction of the critic . . ." This time Editor Gunn manfully printed the criticism in his paper --without changing a word.

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