Blank-Page Policy

When Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told his press conference that he was willing to let a "limited number" of responsible U.S. newsmen into Red China on a pool basis (TIME, May 6), the New York Times 's Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger wrote him a "Dear Foster" letter arguing that any such restriction would be "abridging the freedom of the press." Last week, in a "Dear Arthur" answer, Secretary Dulles gave a definition of press freedom that, if widely adopted, would deny newsmen access to every time-honored news source, from the local police station to the Pentagon to Capitol Hill. "The constitutional 'freedom of the press,' " wrote Dulles, "relates to publication, and not to the gathering of news."

From eminent Lawyer Dulles, this was an astonishing interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Beyond stipulating that the "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," the First Amendment draws no line between the gathering and printing of news. In practice, as Judge Learned Hand wrote (U.S. v. Associated Press, 1943), by disseminating "news from as many different sources, and with as many different facets and colors as possible," newspapers serve the "most vital of all general interests." There have been many cases in U.S. history when, as Dulles noted, the press's search for news has been voluntarily curbed for reasons of national security, the most notable example being World War II censorship. But in accepting restrictions for the good of their country, publishers, editors and reporters have never accepted the notion that they have no right to seek the facts wherever they may be found.

Almost as startling as Secretary Dulles' restrictive view, was the lethargy with which journalism responded. One of the few papers to protest was the New York Times: "Surely Mr. Dulles must realize that the right to publish news depends on the prior right to have access to it. If access is arbitrarily limited, as in the present case, the right of publication is interfered with to exactly the same degree. Would Mr. Dulles contend that freedom to produce a blank page is 'freedom of the press?' "

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