Professional Secret

Clergymen have been hailing Lutheran Pastor Emil Swenson of Minneapolis who accepted a court sentence rather than reveal secrets confided to him by a parish- ioner (TIME, March 16). The Press, which also hailed Pastor Swenson, last week hailed even more loudly a "martyr" of its own: youthful, dapper Edmond M. Barr, dramatic critic and ace newshawk of the Dallas Dispatch. Reporter Barr went to jail rather than break journalism's proud rule: Never expose your pipelines. Reporter Barr wrote for his paper of how two Communist organizers, C. J. Coder and Lewis Hurst, were taken from the city hall steps (immediately after their release from jail) by 14 kidnappers, allegedly Klansmen, to a secluded spot where they were flogged with ropes and left bound & bleeding. Neither victim was again heard of. Haled before District Judge Grover Adams to tell the source of his story, Reporter Barr would say only: "I can't betray a confidence." He was fined $100 and went to jail for contempt of court. Telegrams of congratulation, letters, gifts of cigarets, books and magazines poured into his cell. Reporter Barr's lawyer finally persuaded him that his information was not legally "privileged," that he might be kept behind bars indefinitely until he would speak. Then Reporter Barr named his informant--Norman Register, secretary to the district attorney--and was set free. Secretary Register, summoned before the Grand Jury, denied giving Barr the story. But as he left the courtroom arm-in-arm with Barr, Register was heard to say: "That's all right, Eddie; it had to come out some time." Straightway a bill was offered in the Texas Legislature, similar to a Maryland statute, to make newsgatherers immune from "duress testimony." In 1929 Senator Arthur Capper planned a like measure in

Congress, after three reporters of Hearst's Washington Times had gone to jail for refusing to tell a Grand Jury the names and addresses of speakeasies described in a Times survey. No Federal law materialized.

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