The problem of getting the news of Russia--and getting it out of Russia--is, as you know, a major concern of the U.S. and the world press. A corollary of this problem, the Soviet press itself, is the subject of a recent report by Craig Thompson, now home from a two-year tour of duty for TIME & LIFE in Moscow. The following excerpt from it may interest you:

"Under the code of Soviet censorship a foreign correspondent is not supposed to write anything that has not already appeared in Russian newspapers or periodicals. This state of affairs, and the scarcity of normal news sources, forces him to become an avid reader of Soviet news. For anyone brought up on the traditional, all-inclusive output of the American press, however, the Soviet press's ideological approach to the news takes considerable getting used to. Their press is not a people's press, although it claims to be. It is a party press. The Communist Party owns it, controls it, and uses it both as a weapon and a tactic.

"In Moscow, for instance, there are eight daily papers and each is supposed to represent a definite state organism. Pravda is the voice of the party's Central Committee; Izvestia, the organ of the Government. Red Star is the Army newspaper; Red Fleet, the Navy newspaper, etc.

"The news these four-to-six page papers (average newsstand price: about five cents) print is as definitely circumscribed as a correspondent's movements in Russia. Foreign news is pretty much identical, even to headlines, in all eight papers. Editing is slanted, and, by selection, news distorted. Crime news, despite the fact that there is an abundance of crime to report, is played down. There is considerable criticism of the arts. The rest of the printed news consists almost entirely of stories that are 1) admonitory (general and often specific criticism of conditions in the Soviet Union), 2) exhortatory (to spur desirable activities like 'the proper service of customers in communal dining rooms'), 3) panegyrical (eulogizing Stalin, etc.).

"The individual being subordinate to the state, names do not make news in the Soviet press -- except, occasionally, when Molotov's daughter wins a silver star in school or a Russian does or says something the party considers worth identifying him with. Consequently, the wealth of revealing human interest stories so prevalent in the U.S. press is not available for the edification of the Russian reader or the foreign correspondent.

"Nevertheless, this grim, educational fare has a definite news value for the foreign correspondent. From a careful, complete daily reading of it he can: 1) discover what the latest party thinking is on certain subjects and thus be guided in the application of that thinking to Russia's internal and international problems; 2) find out what some of Russia's top figures have been doing -- from accounts of special decorations they have received, plus prior knowledge of their activities; 3) get some idea of the state of the Russian economy by noting where various plans have succeeded or failed of fulfillment; 4) learn the current party attitude toward nations and movements within those nations by the choice of news to be printed from abroad.

"This is a poor return for the amount of information about the U.S. disclosed daily in its free press, but it means even less to the average Russian reader. In general, he may doubt the word of his lesser newspapers, but when Pravda or Tass (the news agency) speaks, he feels that he is listening to the voice of his Government and is inclined to believe. There are exceptions, of course. I once asked a Russian acquaintance what he thought about a Tass account of a U.S. Negro youth congress which condemned lynchings and the activities of certain U.S. Senators. He replied: 'Do you think we're all idiots? Don't you think some of us will wonder why the Negroes, if they're so badly treated, are allowed to hold meetings and denounce Senators?' "

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