Ethics and Censorship

Most U. S. newspapermen have stopped asking each other: Will there or will there not be a press censorship? Instead they ask: What kind of censorship will there be? To this question the main corollaries are still well on the side of confusion, exasperation and no little uneasiness (TIME, Feb. 17). Last week the censorship problem took a new dramatic turn.

Occasion was a White House press conference--longest in many a month. The conference started slowly, with routine questions. But veteran correspondents noticed the President's nervous swiveling sensed that he had something important on his mind. They were right. Queried one: Was it true, as General Marshall was reported to have said the day before, that the Pacific Fleet had been reinforced by an undisclosed number of fighting planes?

The President leaned forward tautly, rapped out two quick questions which established that Marshall's statement had leaked out of secret testimony before the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Then, while the iron still sizzled, the President spoke his mind. Let it be understood first, he prefaced, that he was not angry. All he wanted to do was to raise two problems involving ethics, morals and patriotism. The problems: 1) whether members of a Congressional committee are not ethically, morally and patriotically bound to keep secret testimony to themselves; and 2) whether newspapers are not ethically, morally and patriotically bound to refuse to print such secret testimony, no matter whether it leaks out through a Congressman or not.

The President emphasized that he placed no blame. Least of all did he blame reporters. Any reporter worth his salt, said he, naturally does his best to get the story, secret or not. The truly interesting problem, he said, revolved around the ethics of the publishers who printed such secret testimony--though he placed no blame on them either, recognizing that their job also was to print all the news they could get.

Another thing, said the President, and pointed to a memorandum turned face down on his desk: He had there a transcript of what Marshall had actually said, and it did not agree with the newspapers' second-and third-hand accounts. Said a reporter: That being the case, would the President correct the newspapers' erroneous accounts? The President laughed. That said he, would be what is called compounding a felony. Asked another reporter: Did the President consider Marshall's published statement truly damaging to national defense? The President said emphatically that he did.

Then a reporter asked the question that looms largest in every reporter's mind: What, then, constituted a national defense secret? The President answered philosophically: Mighty little information had been kept secret, and that little had certainly hurt nobody. In general a military secret was what the Army and Navy and Commander in Chief said was a secret. For the rest, the newspaperman's guide would have to be his own conscience, discretion and good sense.

Perhaps, ventured a reporter, the simplest way out was to discontinue Army and Navy testimony before closed committees. The President agreed that it would be much safer, but said that naturally the Government did not like to leave Congress out in the cold on vital information.

His suggested solution: that Senators hold their tongues. The President was asked if he did not think something definite should be done to stop such leaks in future. Replying, the President re-emphasized his main theme: He was not suggesting a remedy in any manner, shape or form; he was solely concerned in raising an interesting ethical problem which the American people should begin thinking about.

"Ominous." Quickest reaction came in the incensed comments of Senator Wheeler, whose isolationist ammunition had lately been running low. ("The President not only desires to muzzle Senators who oppose him but he wants to muzzle the press and keep facts away from the people. . . .") A few White House correspondents thought they detected portents in the President's talk regarding the shape of news to come. Warned the New York Sun: ". . . an ominous climax to a long series of events that have led definitely in the direction of Governmental control of the press." Some reporters were puzzled, reacting as though they had been spanked for the wrong misdeed. Said the Philadelphia Record: "If the press can't quote Senators, whom can it quote?" A few felt that the President had impugned their professional integrity. Said the Baltimore Sun: "The practice which the President denounced is a prevailing practice, tested by time and proved to be, on the whole, frequently useful in the democratic process. . . . That any question of fundamental human ethics is involved, it is hard to grant."

But a substantial group of White House correspondents--including the President's longtime critic, Mark Sullivan--reacted calmly. Impressed by the President's reasonable and earnest manner (in contrast to previous Presidential blowups about the press), they granted that both Marshall and the President had a just grievance. What especially reassured them was the fact that the President of the U. S. had at last brought their own most serious secret worry into the open. An invitation to a public discussion about censorship was at least a step ahead. They were far from agreeing, however, that their very real problems in reporting national defense had been solved.

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