Who Judges the Judges?

Abstract

It happened on the eve of the election. A reader called the editorial office to ask: "Is it true that your correspondent Borin wrote an article defending his relative?" Generally, such "sensations" are nothing new to newspapermen; no sooner do we return from an assignment than the mud is already flying at our backs, faster than speeding bullets. But this was a rare case: the gossip hadn't fluttered from an anonymous letter, nor from chatty old ladies tittle-tattling on a park bench. The man who telephoned assured us that at a meeting with voters, a candidate for people's judge, V. V. Kul'kov, publicly stated that an LG correspondent had written the article "Supplicants and Benefactors" not for verity's sake, but allegedly to shield his relative. He said that Kul'kov had even specified the family relation as being on the correspondent's wife's side.