Restraint Call Worries U.S. Press

Press, Volume C, Issue 29509, 10 May 1961, Page 15

Restraint Call Worries U.S. Press

[Specially written tor the N.Z.P.A. by FRAftK OLIVER)

WASHINGTON, May 1. (By Airmail). President Kennedy has set off a good deal of soul-searching among American newspapers by his remarks suggesting rather more restraint in the publication bf information which might help the enemy and damage the United States.

He called it “the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war." The responsible newspapers of the country are in agreement that the dilemma exists. There is no similar agreement about what can or should be done about it. This dilemma is not new in the United States. Nowhere in the world has the right of the press “to know" been as highly developed and staunchly defended as in the United States. Journalists from other sections of the English-writing world have more than once thought and said that "freedom" has sometimes been confused with “licence” Nowhere in the world has the fourth estate managed to develop in the other estates as much respect for itself as irf America, and often it is a respect tinged with fear. The American press is remarkably powerful. Thus the President’s request for more restraint on publication of information strikes the press as a matter of more gravity than would such a request, say, to the British press by the Prime Minister. The soul-searching is on. What has the press done that

it might better not have done? Shall an inch of freedom be given up voluntarily in favour of what some consider to be the national interest? Can any freedom once given up ever be recovered? How can the right of the people “to know" be reconciled with what the President asks? The President is not the first official to draw attention to the disadvantages of a democracy living in a gold-fish bowl. A dozen years ago James Forrestal, then Secretary of Defence, asked for “an assumption by the information media of their responsibility in voluntarily refraining from publishing information detrimental to our national security.” By and large the press is not convinced that "greater official secrecy” offers a way out of the dilemma. The Washington "Post" says that too much information may be a problem but it hardly looms as the major problem in any area of the world where the American-Soviet confrontation is the most acute. "Publicity did not cause and secrecy would not have prevented the crises In Laos. Cuba or Algeria.” The “New York Times” says the problem is one which has deeply troubled

thoughtful newspapermen throughout the country and adds: “A free society cannot function half free and half scared, half lawful and half lawless.” An official of one news agency says any responsible publication would refrain from knowingly disclosing information that might damage the national interest and the problem centres "in distinguishing between that which might jeopardise and that which does not.” He said that self-censor-ship depended on guidance from responsible Government officials “who also take the responsibility for the effects and results of their decisions.” Another news agency official says this is indeed the time for self-discipiine, but reference to unauthorised disclosures brings up the point of who is going to do the authorising. Since the Kennedy Administration took office there has been sharp criticism from some Republican quarters that the Government has been making it difficult for the press to get information to which it is entitled. On the other hand, Mr James Hagerty, Mr Eisenhower’s press spokesman for eight years, who speaks with an inside knowledge possessed by few journalists, gave his "hundred per cent, endorsement" to the President’s call for voluntary censorship by the press. Now vice-president of the American Broadeasting Corporation, Mr Hagerty has

told the White House that the A BC. will comply with the President’s request, though he told an audience in Philadelphia that voluntary censorship as “a continuing and challenging problem" is one "which does not have a simple solution." Another commentator remarks that the printed word confers its boon upon the just and the unjust. Under both Truman and Eisenhower, he says, a formidable structure of official secrecy was established and in some ways it hides the operations of the defence establishment more than did war-time censorship. The basic liberality of World War II censorship sometimes is forgotten, says the Washington “Post.” “This voluntary system limited itself to matters of security: to cases which the danger of disclosure was demonstrably clear.” "It avoided interference with editorial opinion; was never influenced by nonsecurity considerations; never held up publication of the utterances of responsible public officials; did not withhold from Americans Information published abroad: operated openly, and advised the public of every suppression request made by the Government.” It is argued that operation of such censorship now would not have greatly altered the results of the Cuban invasion or the crisis in Laos. Another argument is that no restraint by the press could have concealed know-

ledge of the openly-conduct-ed endeavours of Cubans in Florida without utterly destroying public confidence in the press and denying information to Americans which was widely printed abroad More than one commentator thinks the President did not make out a good case for self-censorship in the instances he gave, but it is widely agreed that a real problem does exist. “How,” asks the Washington "Post,” “are we to meet the challenge of a foe which does not oblige us by declaring war, but carries it on relentlessly on a thousand fronts without declaration or disclosure?” It says that the President will not be disappointed in the response of the press to any summons to weigh the rights of newspapers against the national good, but that what is involved is not the rights of newspapers so much as the rights of American citizens. His admonition to consider "national interest" and not just "Is it news?” will not go unheeded, says the "Post.” "But the fundamental premise of a free press in a free society is that, by and large, an affirmative answer to one question is an affirmative answer to the other.” It also points out that no man can say when restrictions to which the press consents will come to an end, but “we must somehow manage to avoid the destruction of our freedom by others without abandoning that freedom ourselves.”