'Newsday' Prints Editor's Note on Breslin

By: (AP) Newsday of Melville, N.Y., said in an editor's note published Thursday that comments columnist Jimmy Breslin attributed to a conservative lobbyist in a recent column were not precise quotations.

But the newspaper said Breslin maintains that the quotes "were an accurate reflection of the essence" of a 1992 conversation with the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.

The April 7, 2004, column "should have indicated that it was based on a conversation that took place in 1992," Newsday said. "And the column did not adhere to Newsday's standard of publishing only direct quotations that are accurate and precise."

Asked whether Breslin would face sanctions, Les Payne, editor of the newspaper's New York edition, said Thursday, "Obviously, whatever action is taken, we keep it in house. ... He made a mistake and he admits that."

Sheldon had accused the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of fabricating the quotations in the column, which read in part: "'Homosexuals are dangerous,' Sheldon assured me one day. ... 'They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual.'"

In a telegram to Newsday, Sheldon had said: "I do not recall ever meeting or being interviewed by Mr. Breslin. I have never made statements like these to Mr. Breslin or anyone else," the newspaper said.

Breslin said he met Sheldon at the Republican National Convention in Houston in 1992 and wrote a column about the conversation on Aug. 18, 1992.

He also produced an Aug. 29, 1995, column in which he said he quoted Sheldon not by name but as "the theoretician on homosexual issues of the Religious Right."

In neither column were the quotes word-for-word the same as those used in last week's column, but Breslin says he and Sheldon had a larger exchange.

"Breslin said he erred in not referring to the 1995 column before writing his April 7, 2004 column. Instead, he drew the quotes from memory," Newsday said in the editor's note. "The result is that the quotes attributed to Sheldon in the April 7 column were incorrect and not Sheldon's precise words."

Breslin won a Pulitzer in 1986 for distinguished commentary writing.