Kennedy Urges Press Caution

Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 11

Kennedy Urges Press Caution

ttiZ, Press A ) NEW YORK, April 28. A secret mechanism used by the United States to track satellites had to be altered at considerable cost and loss of time because details of it appeared in an American newspaper.

President Kennedy disclosed this last night when he interpolated four words into a prepared address to the American Newspaper Publishers' Association at a Waldorf Hotel banquet in New York.

Urging the American press to take a great account of national security. Mr Kennedy spoke of publication of details of a “secret mechanism in our possession—whereby satellites were followed —(which) required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money.”

The words “whereby satellites were followed” were not in the text of his speech :ssued to the press beforehand.

The President said that “no war ever posed a greater threat” to United States security than the present international situation. "This nation's foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage.” he said The President did not specify when or in what publication the disclosure about a tracking device was made.

At the dinner, which was attended by 1700 of America’s leading newspaper publishers and editors, the President said that every journalist in the nation had to re-examine his own standards "and

recognise the nature of our country’s peril.

“Every newspaper now asks itself with respect to every story, 'ls it news?' All I suggest is that you add the question. 'ls it in the interests of national security?' “And should the press of America consider and recommend the voluntary assumption of specific new steps or machinery I can assure you that we will co-operate wholeheartedly with those recommendations,” he said. President Kennedy also said that if only a “capitalist New York newspaper” had treated Karl Marx more kindly, “history might have been different.” In 1851 the New York “Herald-Tribune” employed Marx, the father of communism. as a leader-writer and foreign correspondent in London.

Marx had complained that his pay of “five dollars per instalment” was the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating," the President said. Because of this Marx looked round for other thipgs to do and devoted himself “full-time” to the cause of communism. “If only a capitalist New York newsnaper treated him more kindly and if only Karl Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different.” the President said.

He added jokingly that he hoped all publishers would bear this in mind next time they got an appeal for a small increase in a reporter’s pay.