![]() Four-column display was infrequent, although not unheard of, on the Times’ front pages of the early 1960s.īut without a reference to the invasion’s imminence, a four-column headline was difficult to justify. Salisbury noted in “ Without Fear or Favor: The New York Times and Its Times,” an insider’s account. A four-column headline would have signaled “a story of exceptional importance,” former Times reporter and editor Harrison E. The size of a newspaper headline typically corresponds to an article’s relative significance. A headline spanning four columns had been planned. Both decisions were modest and judicious.ĭispute arose among Times editors internally about trimming to a single column the headline that accompanied Szulc’s story. The managing editor, Turner Catledge, later wrote that he “was hesitant to specify the CIA when we might not be able to document the charge.” The term “United States officials” was substituted. They reasoned that “imminent” was more prediction than fact. Modest and judicious editsĪccording to subsequent accounts by senior editors at the Times, references to imminence and the CIA were removed before the article was published. The April 7 article was written by Tad Szulc, a veteran foreign correspondent who reported from Miami that an assault by CIA-trained Cuban rebels was imminent. There is no evidence that Kennedy or anyone in his administration lobbied or persuaded the Times to hold back or significantly dilute that story, as many accounts have claimed. Moreover, there is no evidence Kennedy knew in advance about the Times report published April 7, 1961, a front-page article about invasion preparations that lies at the heart of the suppression myth. ![]() Readers could tell what was coming, if not always in specific detail. In fact, the Times reports about preparations for the assault were detailed and often prominently displayed on the front page. JFK Presidential Library Widely known, often retoldĪs I discuss in “ Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism,” the Times did not suppress reports about the approaching invasion, which was launched April 17, 1961, and failed to dislodge Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan were together at the time Kennedy was rumored to have called editors at The New York Times. ![]()
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