Word: venal
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...Minister, he read Greek at eight, graduated from Brown University at 19, studied law and joined a Manhattan law firm. The public first heard of him in 1905. Appointed a special counsel, he investigated a scandalous gas monopoly and won a consequential cut in rates. He also uncovered a venal conspiracy between city officials and New York insurance firms. On the strength of these crusades, he was elected governor of New York over the Democratic nominee, William Randolph Hearst...
...Venal. By U.S. standards, French journalism has always been nonobjective, cynical and, before the war, appallingly venal. Several influential national dailies (la grande presse) were potent enough to topple governments. But the French coined the ugly term la presse pourrie ("rotten press") for those that sold out to big business or to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Balkan countries...
White-haired Georges Cogniot, editor in chief of L'Humanite (circ. 450,000), insists that "the press is now venal in a different way from before the war. It still gets money from [big business] trusts, publicity or the government's secret funds." But the charge can neither be proved nor disproved. The government allots newsprint, pegs its price, and subsidizes the news service A.F.P. (which could not exist otherwise), but expression is free...
...dilemma is whether to keep the venal friendship of the Arabs, which they cannot afford to forsake, or whether to uphold the honor and decency of the U.S. and the hard-pressed authority of the United Nations. The dilemma, thus, does not exist; it lacks horns...
...Friends Prince Peter of Greece, ex-Premier Paul Reynaud, Mistinguett, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Cocteau, Cinema Producers Marcel Pagnol and René Clair, dozens of writers, Cabinet Ministers, deputies and generals. They could toast Lazareff as one of the few journalists who had lived through, without being stained by, the venal days of France's prewar press. They also could toast a proved proposition : that journalistic honesty can pay off in France...