Newspapers: Letter from Paris

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The letters column of a newspaper presents its readers with a public forum in which to judge the quality of its journalism—if they choose to write and if the paper chooses to publish their letters. Last week, with a remarkable display of willingness to let its critics speak, the New York Times printed a column-long letter containing one of the sharpest attacks to date of its coverage of the war in Viet Nam. The writer: Frederick E. Nolting Jr., 55, a U.S. diplomat for 17 years, former U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam, and now a Paris-based vice president of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. Excerpts from his letter to the Times:

"Twice in recent months you have published news articles from your correspondent in Saigon, Charles Mohr, which tempt me to comment. In his news article about elections for the Vietnamese Constituent Assembly, Mr. Mohr said: 'It was a momentous event in the history of a people who have never had representative, honestly elected self-government.' Again, in the edition of Oct. 2, Mr. Mohr wrote from Saigon: The members of the Assembly have been chosen in the first really free and fair national election ever held here.' These statements, I think, carry on a tradition ot" misleading and prejudiced reporting on Vietnam by certain New York Times correspondents extending over a number of years."

"Why Distort?" "Your correspondent and your editors undoubtedly know of the two elections in South Vietnam (1955 and 1961) in which Ngo Dinh Diem was elected and then re-elected President of the Republic of Vietnam. You must also be aware that the National Assembly was for eight years the elected legislative body of South Vietnam, functioning under the Vietnamese Constitution, until the overthrow of the Diem Government on Nov. 1, 1963. Elections were held for the National Assembly as late as October 1963—a month before a group of Vietnamese generals, encouraged by the United States Government, illegally seized power (and assassinated President Diem).

"The attempt to define representative government is as old as Plato, but, by any reasonable definition, the Vietnamese people certainly had more of it under President Diem—than they have had since his overthrow. They had a Constitution (modeled on that of the United States), they had an elected legislative body, they had a Cabinet of responsible ministers, they had a Supreme Court, they had an elected President. Even though the minds of the people had been attuned for generations to authoritarian rule, they were beginning to learn the rudiments of self-government through institutions developed during Diem's eight years as constitutional President.