78-09-B3

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Free Press

Transcript The Soviet Union's two most important newspapers--both government operated--are Pravda and Investia. Now the word "Pravda" means "truth" and "Investia" means "news". There is a joke the Russian people tell, but not out loud. They say "There is no 'Investia' in 'Pravda' and no 'Pravda' in 'Investia'." But one thing is certain, when the Russians put on a propaganda effort it succeeds. There is no one to blow the whistle on them and cry foul. They have created a national hero in the Soviet Union, using an American prison inmate you probably never heard of. Russians are flooding Pravda and Investia--as well as the office of the Governor of Alabama--with mail. Alabama is where the man is in prison awaiting execution. He is going to be executed, the Russians say, because he is "an eloquent pointer to the violation of human rights, the lawlessness of arbitrary rule that has become part of American today." A member of the Presidium of the Soviet Women's committee sees in the impending execution an indication that, "U.S. racists want to electrocute the young worker for adhering to progressive views." The rector of a Soviet university says "American talk about human rights is worthless if a person can be sentenced to death for daring to protest against oppression and lawlessness." The Soviet media, on orders of course, have produced an instant celebrity. From the Ukraine to Siberia, the Russian man and woman in the street knows that a "young worker" is about to be slaughtered for his beliefs, after trial in a rigged court on prefabricated charges. A team of Soviet reporters came all the way to Alabama to interview the man to whom they had given nationwide celebrity status in their own land. The interview never took place. Alabama, like a number of other states, has a policy forbidding interviews with death row inmates. One of the Russian reporters was given a tour of the prison and a look at the electric chair, which hasn't been used in 13 years. Then the entire Soviet news delegation interviewed "civil rights" activists in the state. Interestingly, the man who has been the object of so much attention in Russia has had his execution postponed pending an appeal. That probably wouldn't be of interest to the Russian journalists. They'd have to explain to their readers about the right of appeal, which isn't much of a commonplace in the Soviet system of justice. And you can be sure they won't tell their readers at home why their celebrity is really on death row. It isn't because he's a fighter for human rights or is a martyr for his beliefs. He murdered a guard while serving a life sentence for robbery and rape. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-09-B3 Production Date 06/27/1978 Book/Page RPtV-325 Audio Youtube? No
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