The Brookhaven Symphony Litigation

Demanding that a newspaper print the truth

This action was brought against the daily New York newspaper Newsday to compel them to print all the relevant facts concerning an alleged political scandal, rather than merely those facts chosen by its editorial staff. The action was not a conventional libel or defamation claim and it did not seek money damages. It was an equity action asking the Court to:

“Direct Newsday, Inc. the parent corporation of the New York daily newspaper, Newsday, to immediately publish a full fair and complete statement of the nature of Yannacone’s relationship with the Brookhaven Town Council on the Arts, the Recording Industry Music Performance Trust Funds, the Associated Musicians of Greater New York (Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada), and the Town of Brookhaven according the full and complete public disclosure made by the Yannacone under oath on April 25 and May 2, 1968 utilizing the same type style and size and substantially the same format as that utilized in publishing the defamatory material contained in the May 6, 1968 issue of Newsday.”

At stake was the future of the Brookhaven Town Council on the Arts, the first municipal arts council and United States, and the Brookhaven Town Symphony Orchestra, the first wholly municipal Symphony Orchestra in the United States. This was also the first effort by the Music Performance Trust Funds of the Recording Industry to bring free concerts to rural ad suburban areas outside the New York City limits.

The Music Performance Trust Fund was created from the eventual settlement of the ill-fated strike which closed the recording industry to professional instrumental musicians particularly from New York from 1942 to 1944 and again in 1948. The strike had been called by the tyrannical James Caesar Petrillo in an effort to destroy the rising demands by New York Local 802 for an end to racial discrimination in musical performing groups and complete integration in the AF of M. Petrillo had acquired absolute control of the international musicians union from his lifetime position as president of the all white segregated Local 10 in Chicago and his unwavering insistence on separate all white and “colored” locals throughout the United States. Only the largest local of the AF of M, New York Local 802, was fully integrated and it stood alone for integration against Petrillo. Until he was finally deposed in 1958, Petrillo attempted to prevent the Recording Industry Music Performance Trust Funds from sponsoring free public concerts by mixed race ensembles. The Brookhaven Town Symphony was not just the first municipal symphony orchestra, it was the first fully racially and ethnically integrated Symphony orchestra at the time.

Order to Show Cause and Verified Complaint

19680427_Letter to Newsday

Music Performance Trust Fund affidavit

The Music Performance Trust Fund Proposal; Executive Summary

Brookhaven Council on the Arts Mission Statement