IF Stone

IF Stone in April 1972

Isidor Feinstein Stone (born December 24, 1907 in Philadelphia , † June 18, 1989 in Boston ) was an American investigative journalist. Between 1953 and 1971 he published the IF Stone's Weekly newsletter .

Life

Stone was the child of Jewish-Russian migrants and was born in Philadelphia . The journalist and critic Judy Stone was his sister.

He attended high school in Haddonfield . His career as a journalist began in his sophomore year of high school. Stone founded The Progress newspaper. He later worked for Haddonfiel Press and Camden Courier-Post . After leaving the University of Pennsylvania , he joined The Philadelphia Inquirer .

During the 1930s, Stone was an active member of the Popular Front , which was active against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis .

IF Stone married Esther Roisman in 1929. The couple had three children.

Work style

Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine said that hard work is a hallmark of Stone's work. As a reporter, he used publicly available sources for his work. He devoured these documents, for example working on the Congressional Record, studying the minutes of public hearings, debates and reports.

Career

The New York Post

Stone was a reporter for the New York Post in 1933 . He supported the work of Franklin D. Roosevelt , in particular the policy of the New Deal . In his book The Court disposes , he criticized the reactionary role of the US Supreme Court . This would block the implementation of the New Deal reforms.

Stern and Stone argued over journalism, its practice, and practices at the time. He left the New York Post after complaining about unfair working conditions and ruling against him.

The Nation

After leaving the New York Post, Stone worked for The Nation . First as co-editor and later as editor in Washington, DC In his 1941 book Business as Usual: The First Year of Defense , Stone reported on inefficient planning and execution of the industrial monopolies. Stone exposed institutional racism and anti-Semitism in the FBI's hiring process. Through specific questions, subversive forces should be discovered, identified and excluded. The readers thanked The Nation for the reports. Stone, on the other hand, has been criticized by right-wing forces for keeping his sources anonymous.

In 1946, Freda Kirchwey quit Stone because he had accepted a job at PM (Picture Magazine) . As a foreign correspondent, he was supposed to report on the Jewish Resistance Movement under the League of Nations mandate for Palestine . Later on, Israel and other states were to emerge in the mandate area.

PM (Picture Magazine)

Stone was the correspondent for PM in Washington, DC There he published a series of articles about Jewish refugees heading for Palestine. He later wrote the book Underground to Palestine on the location. In 1948 the PM was closed. Stone then worked for the New York Star and later for The Daily Compass .

Zionism and the State of Israel

At the end of World War II, Stone went to the League of Nations mandate for Palestine to report on the mass migration of European Jews. Especially the victims of the Nazis from the Eastern European countries fled. In his book Underground to Palestine , Stone reported that it would benefit the political, financial, and personal interests of Jews more if they emigrated to the United States.

As a secular Jew , Stone supported the state of Israel even before it was recognized by the United States. As a politically moderate Zionist , he was in favor of a one-state solution in which Israel would be inhabited by Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs on an equal footing.

IF Stone Weekly

Stone was a mainstream journalist in the 1930s. Twenty years later, he was having a harder time finding work. Probably also because he publicly confessed to being a companion . This led to Stone launching its IF Stone Weekly newsletter in 1953 . The Muckraker George Seldes was an inspiration for Stone with his magazine In Fact . In the following years, the newsletter positioned itself against McCarthyism and racial discrimination .

By studying public sources, he found inconsistencies in the information about the Gulf of Tonkin incident . In the 1960s he criticized the Vietnam War. At its peak, the magazine had around 70,000 subscribers and was considered very influential.