The Press: Ssh!

Confidential, whose 3,674,423 circulation now makes it the top single-copy newsstand seller in the U.S., has been attracting libel suits along with circulation. Last week Publisher Robert Harrison's bimonthly dirt digest admitted making its first payment for libel: a $9,000 out-of-court settlement to Lyle Stuart, editor of Expose (circ. 20,000), a muckraking monthly tabloid.

In its January 1954 issue Confidential called Editor Stuart, among other things, an admitted extortioner, a hate peddler and a coddler of Communists. To keep the $9,000 in settlement of his $250,000 suit (and presumably to keep Confidential's vulnerability...

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