Needed: A Rule Book

After a brief rest leave in Tokyo, Correspondent Tom Lambert of the Associated Press climbed into clean combat fatigues last week to go back to the front. Just as Lambert was boarding a bus for the airfield, he was handed an unexpected, unwelcome and undeserved order from Colonel Marion P. Echols, press chief for General MacArthur. For filing dispatches giving "aid and comfort to the enemy," able, conscientious Newsman Lambert was forbidden to return to Korea. So was United Press Correspondent Peter Kalischer, for the same harsh reason.

Colonel Echols offered only one example of Lambert's "objectionable" reporting. The A.P. man had quoted a front-line G.I.: "You don't fight two tank-equipped divisions with .30-caliber carbines. I never saw such a useless damned war in all my life." Echols said some Kalischer dispatches also "made the Army look bad."

U.S. editors fired off protests to MacArthur, including cables from the New York chiefs of A.P. and U.P. In Tokyo, the wire services' bureau chiefs went to see MacArthur, took Lambert and Kalischer along. Affable and apologetic, MacArthur implied that he had not known of the decision, that it had been made by a subordinate. (Commented one old newsman later: "Nobody here but us chicken colonels.") MacArthur added that censorship was "abhorrent" to him.

The general preferred to let the correspondents decide for themselves what should and should not be reported. A correspondent could get a green, battle-shocked soldier to say anything, said MacArthur, but it was the correspondent's responsibility to achieve a "leavening balance." Expressing confidence in his "old friends" Lambert and Kalischer, MacArthur revoked the Echols ban.

No Distinction. MacArthur's action did not solve the basic problem of reporting the Korean war. As long as there was only "voluntary censorship," and no clearly defined set of security regulations, any correspondent might guess wrong on what he should report. What particularly irked the correspondents was that MacArthur's aides seemed to make no distinction between military security and military prestige. While no newsman wanted to report strictly military information that might aid and comfort the enemy, every honest newsman wanted to tell the story straight, even if the telling reflected on the prestige of U.S. arms. As U.P. Tokyo Bureau Chief Earnest Hoberecht said: "The United Press will report victories when there are victories, but we cannot report victories when there are defeats."

Earlier in the week, General MacArthur had issued a communique charging the press with distorting the Korean war picture. Said MacArthur: "Losses sustained by American forces in Korea have been greatly exaggerated in press reports [which] have given a completely distorted and misrepresentative picture ..." In the communique, MacArthur for the first time disclosed total U.S. casualty figures, which were undoubtedly smaller than published stories had led most Americans to expect. He also cited the case of the "Lost Battalion," reported as close to annihilation, although "its actual losses amounted to only two killed, seven wounded and twelve missing."

This criticism was less than fair: part of the blame for any distortion or false emphasis rested on the shoulders of MacArthur's own staff. Despite ' repeated requests, it had failed to provide the regular briefings that newsmen needed in order to evaluate the platoon-and battalion-level reports they got from the front.

No Agreement. At home, there was equal confusion. The Army still listed transport sailings, the Navy banned such information; both services were talking about the same ships. After asking newspapers not to use pictures of FSI Mustangs being loaded on the carrier Boxer, the Navy then released the pictures. An Air Force officer barred interviews with passengers arriving in the U.S. from overseas, then was overruled.

Later in the week, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson did issue a belated memorandum to the armed forces. It ordered censorship-at-the-source on such specific military information as strength of units, status of equipment, date of sailing time, etc. But there was still nothing but individual judgment to prevent newspapers from publishing such information if their reporters got it on their own hook.

After reading a detailed A.P. story on the sailing of elements of the First Marine Division last week, Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois denounced such stories as "almost criminal." Majority Leader Lucas called on President Truman to ask the press to impose self-censorship at once, or face a Government censorship. In Lucas' home state, the Chicago Sun-Times made a Page One pledge to swear off news of troop departures, names of vessels, and destinations, except in official announcements.

But such isolated pledges would not do the trick. In World War II, Byron Price, an ex-A.P. executive, had ably directed an Office of Censorship that provided 1) a specific code to inform the press on what information endangered military security, 2) a voluntary agreement to observe these restrictions, and 3) a civilian board of interpretation and appeal. That had worked well then, and many U.S. editors thought it would work well now.

Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune (TIME, July 10), only woman among the 131 correspondents in the Korean theater, was ordered to return to Tokyo last week. Lieut. General Walton H. Walker, ground forces commander in Korea, feared for her safety in the front lines. Said angry Newshen Higgins: "I am going down to General Walker's headquarters [to] convince him that I ... am here as a correspondent and not as a woman."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.