I fired William F. Buckley, Jr. He did not take it well. When I canceled his column in the Des Moines Tribune in the 1970s he made an unpleasant fuss and misrepresented why we parted company.
Buckley and I had had a running back-and-forth about an issue of journalism ethics. I told him he had an obligation to editors who bought his syndicated column, and to readers, to disclose his family's interests in oil when he wrote about the subject.
Buckley said disclosure was necessary only if it could be shown that he had been inconsistent. I said that put the burden on editors and readers to ferret out inconsistency when all he had to do was disclose his family's interests in oil when he chose to write about the issue.
When we were at an impasse, and neither of us would bend, I canceled the column and replaced it with one by James Kilpatrick, who was equally conservative. Buckley charged that I dropped his column because I disagreed with its conservative outlook. I learned from my experience with Buckley that, with him, a disagreement is all about scoring debating points.
Kilpatrick had worked on a newspaper and was steeped in journalism ethics. At one point he took the lead in assuring that persons attacked in syndicated columns would have an opportunity to respond wherever the attacks appeared. Buckley never worked on a mainstream paper and gave me the impression that he made his own rules. Among other things, when he reprinted our exchanges he gave himself the last word and repeated in print statements made by third parties not meant for publication.
When I challenged Buckley on the issue of his family's financial interests, I naively half-expected that it would lead to a high-minded exchange on the obligations of journalists to editors and readers. I got instead a lot of personal insults and attacks on my motives. Did Buckley really believe, as he claimed, that I was out to destroy his column?
Buckley, who died February 27th, was a prolific writer who left a mark on journalism. As one who had a chance to observe his methods first-hand, the mark I saw was not all that sterling.
