Business & Tech

The Little Paper that Could

The Greenbelt News Review's involvement in a 1966 libel case put it in the history books.

The Greenbelt News Review's impact has reached far beyond its neighborhoods and bordering Beltway. A 1966 libel case against the paper and its president, Alfred M. Skolnik, made it all the way through the Corinthian columns of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Charles Bresler, a local real estate developer balked at the News Review's October 1964 coverage of him in two city council meetings. It had printed citizens' remarks characterizing his development negotiations as "blackmail." And his lawyer equated this to the News Review charging his client with "the commission of the crime of blackmail." Bresler, for his part, claimed their actions had made him "the most hated man in Greenbelt."

This may have been an exaggeration, but by the time he slammed the perennially strapped newspaper with a $2 million lawsuit, not so much. Within weeks, friends of the News Review banded together to form the Greenbelt Freedom of the Press Committee and solicit funds for the newspaper's legal defense.

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The Washington Post also helped by recommending its own law firm get involved. The firm placed the newspaper's defense in the hands of Roger A. Clark, one of their young attorneys – who would go on to make his name with this pro bono case.

A long legal battle ensued. And in January, 1968, the Prince George's County Circuit Court ruled against the News Review, awarding Bresler a $17,500 libel judgment.

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"We were really, really shocked," said Virginia Beauchamp, long-time News Review staff member who serves on its Board of Directors. "It was just like the end of the world." The bad news kept coming, when in May, 1969, the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.

The News Review kept on fighting, taking the case to the highest judicial authority. And on May 18, 1970, The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower courts initial ruling. Justice Potter Steward rendered the decision, holding that "even the most careless reader must have perceived that the word – blackmail – was no more than rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet used by those who considered Bresler's negotiating position extremely unreasonable."

Greenbelt erupted in celebration. Mary Lou Williamson, the News Review's current editor, who also wrote one of the news stories named in the case, remembers citizens flooding the phone lines with the good news, "we had a huge party," she said.

Once more, as in the early Roosevelt Days, from the Washington Post to the Evening Star and New York Times, the headlines were full of Greenbelt and the local newspaper that had safeguarded the First Amendment rights of an entire nation.

Editor's Note: This is the second article in a series of three about the history and impact of the Greenbelt News Review.


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