Passed by Censor

In wartime, U.S. newspapers printed a useful warning to their readers on many dispatches from abroad: "Passed by Censor." That warning has now virtually vanished from the daily U.S. press, but censorship abroad has not. Most U.S. readers, when they stop to think about it at all, realize that the news from Russia is openly censored. Fewer may know that open or indirect censorship is smothering the news in nation after nation, including some which loudly insist that they alone have true "freedom of the press."

Last week the New York Times, which has a larger foreign staff and publishes more foreign dispatches than any other U.S. newspaper, editorially remarked that it was tempted to resume the use of "Censored." As a case in point, the Times took up the "small and dwindling" corps of U.S. correspondents (now five) still permitted to do business in Moscow, including the Times's own Harrison Salisbury (who last week was back in the U.S. for a brief Minnesota vacation). Said the Times: "When [the Moscow correspondent] has written his dispatch, with the best accuracy he can muster, in that blacked-out Russian world, his dispatch must go to the censor. And often the censor then strikes out arbitrarily half of what was originally a balanced report--thereby producing, on his own account, a very definite 'distortion' of the news." The Times regretfully admitted that, as a result, it frequently printed "a distorted or incomplete report from Russia, through no fault of our correspondent, and despite his best efforts to the contrary."

But after thinking the whole thing over, the Times decided that it would be equally misleading to label only its Salisbury stories "Censored," so long as censorship in a variety of forms also exists all the way from Egypt to the Dominican Republic. Summed up the unhappy Times: "How is news subject to all these varying degrees of censorship to be accurately labeled?"

No Way Out? The Times had no solution. Nor did newsmen have any solution to the problem of getting the news in the face of such censorship and of even harsher attempts to terrorize them. Fortnight ago, Czechoslovakia indicted able Times Correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt (along with 20 other Westerners) for espionage and subversion. After dutifully filing a straight story to the Times on the charges (which he denied), Schmidt fled to the U.S. zone of Germany. That left only three regular Western correspondents in Prague, all of them exposed to the kind of attack that had forced able Reporter Schmidt to leave the country.

While Czechoslovakia seems to be working with clumsy stealth toward a purge of all non-Communist correspondents, Bulgaria openly bars all Western newsmen. Rumania is still tighter; it does not even admit Communist reporters from Hungary. No Western correspondents are welcome in Soviet-occupied Eastern Germany either, except on special occasions. To get news from the Soviet zone, the Western newsmen are forced to rely on 1) Soviet-controlled German newspapers, 2) the Soviet-licensed German news agency, 3) clandestine sources. Knowing this, the propaganda-wise Russians sometimes plant phony stories, wait until Western newsmen swallow the Soviet bait, then denounce their "mendacity."

The latest country to vanish behind the censorship curtain is Communist China. On the Chinese mainland last week, there was one Western newsman left--a French correspondent at Shanghai who could not file a word. All the rest had withdrawn to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, where they were trying to cover the story of China's 450 million people from publications printed in Red China and by picking up stray bits from "well-informed travelers" (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Three Little Pigs. But censorship is by no means confined to the Soviet world. In Egypt, King Farouk, incensed by an article about his philandering, recently banned LIFE from his kingdom "forever." In the Western Hemisphere itself, despite U.S. attempts to spread the gospel of press freedom to Latin America, government interference with the internal press and outgoing cables is still common practice in some countries.

This spring the Venezuelan government closed down leftish El National, the country's biggest newspaper, after a linotyper by purposeful accident described the ruling junta as "the three little pigs." But when even pro-junta El Universal (in its social notes) printed a blast at "tyrants," the junta allowed El National to resume publication. Circulation jumped 3,000 copies a day.

As powerful as Juan Peron is in Argentina, he has not dared to shut down critical La Prensa (circ. 400,000) outright. But he has used the newsprint rationing to take paper from La Prensa and give it to his friends. He also exercises a censorship on outgoing cables, has delayed stories and even arrested U.S. newsmen. Fortnight ago, responding to U.S. criticism, Peron kicked out his press purger, Jose Emilio Visca (TIME, June 12) ; but it was too soon to say whether that represented a change of policy or just a change of faces.

No Chastity Belts. Freedom is not losing out everywhere. The Supreme Court of India, in its first term under the new constitution, recently struck down government attempts to ban a pro-Communist weekly and pre-censor an extremist Hindu weekly. Ruled Justice Patanjali Sastri: "Criticism of government and exciting disaffection . . . toward government cannot be regarded as justifying [censorship] of the press."*

In Belgium last week, pro-government La Libre Belgique said that it did not advocate censorship. But it thought that the time had come to warn foreign correspondents that they had been "abusing Belgian hospitality" by their "distorted" coverage of the recent political campaign. In Britain and France, indirect efforts have been made to place official restraints on the press, but newspapers have resisted them. A year after the proposal by Britain's Royal Commission on the Press that a body of press and public members be set up to guard against journalistic "excesses" (TIME, July 11), Britain's publishers are still "considering" (i.e., ignoring) the idea. Last week the French legislature was studying a similar proposal. Alarmed, France's newspapers had joined hands to fight it. "A chastity belt of heavy leather and chains," cried leftist Franc-Tireur. Snapped rightist L'Epoque: "A mailed hand on the liberty of the press." So long as such vigilance continues, the free press at least seemed secure in the democracies, its oldest home.

*For news of censorship in Japan, see FOREIGN NEWS.

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