Muzzle for the Press

President Juan Domingo Peron has long had a stock reply to critics of his press policy: look at the free and active opposition newspapers in Argentina. By last week that answer had lost whatever meaning it once had.

For half a dozen opposition publications there was no freedom of expression--in fact, there was no expression at all. They have been throttled since Buenos Aires print shop owners were invited to police headquarters and told to stop printing them. The printers knuckled under; the papers went out of business.

Peron is out also for bigger game. Staid, profitable La Prensa, stalwart of Latin American journalism, is his quarry. Worn by never-ending schemes to reduce its power, La Prensa has had to cut its advertising space to meet reduced newsprint quotas, which the Government controls. Meanwhile, the Government newspapers--Democracia, El Lider and El Laborista--turn over 100 tons of unsold papers to the scrap dealers each month.

Peron is concerned also about foreign magazines and papers. TIME has been held up in Argentina since the Aug. 18 issue. Last week, the pro-Peron Epoca of Buenos Aires, sizzling because the New York Times had criticized Argentina's role at Rio, complained of "insidious allusions" in the U.S. press. "The Argentine spirit will never tolerate threats or intimidations," glowered Epoca. "Those newspapers that seek to sway us by insult will do small good to the cause of our friendship with the U.S. . . ."

For tighter press relations at home & abroad, Senator Diego Luis Molinari president of the foreign relations committee of the Argentine Senate, was hard at work last week in his room in Manhattan's Hotel Waldorf-Astoria. American-educated (University of Illinois) Senator Molinari was studying U.S. libel law and brushing up on the clashes of U.S. Presidents with the press. Said he: "A part of the Argentine press has been conducting itself scandalously. We are going to end the abuses; the unbridled attacks against the President and Senora de Peron will be stopped. You will see."

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