Jumbo Censorship

Square-jawed Kent Cooper, executive director of the Associated Press, got madder & madder. For nearly two weeks the A.P. had been waiting for a sizable beat from Bari, Italy: Correspondent Joseph Morton's story of a question & answer interview-by-letter with Yugoslavia's Communist Marshal Josip Broz (Tito). But the story was squashed under the political censorship of 224-lb. General Sir Henry Maitland ("Jumbo") Wilson's Mediterranean command.

Last week Kent Cooper's wrath exploded in several directions:

P:To London he sent a strong protest-- by week's end there was no reply.

P:To the U.S. War Department he sent another--there was the immediate buck-passing answer that it was none of the Department's business.

P:To A.P.'s clients in the U.S. and abroad he sent the sizzling text of a message he had sent to General Wilson himself. It reminded the General of his assurances (when he took over from General "Ike" Eisenhower) that there would be no political censorship, as there had been under his Middle East command. Cabled irate Kent Cooper:

"If you feel unable to pass [the] dispatch in question, we would like [a] statement from you as to your reasons therefor. . . ."

Forbidden Land. Cagily, Kent Cooper sent A.P.'s story on the protest to U.S. editors on a hold-for-release basis, io that they would know the censorship score in case the War Department blocked his kick (which it did not). The A.P.'s story was the heaviest indictment yet of non-security censoring. Many papers gave it column-long play. Among the Cooper counts:

P:General Wilson had ignored A.P.'s protest for eight days (and at week's end he had not even acknowledged its receipt).

P:Quiet, usually placid Edward Kennedy, A.P.'s Mediterranean chief, had crackled that this was "a censorship scandal ten times more important than suppression of [the] Patton incident, and if accepted by us can only lead to permanent Allied political censorship in Europe."

P:After A.P.'s Correspondent Daniel De Luce got into Yugoslavia (TIME, Oct. 18) for a close-up of Tito's Partisans (a feat that won him a Pulitzer prize), the military had declared Tito-land out of bounds to newsmen. Two reporters (not A.P. men and not identified) had been arrested by Allied soldiers for trying to enter Yugoslavia. Correspondent De Luce, despite two official requests by Marshal Tito, had been refused authority to enter. De Luce had informed the A.P. that he had "the only travel order issued a correspondent by Tito, but using it would make me liable to military arrest" in General Wilson's theater.

Forbidden News. The A.P. was not the only collector of data on "Jumbo" Wilson's censorship. Other details leaked out. All Balkan stories having political implications had to be sent to Cairo, and Cairo's British censor was notoriously heavyhanded. On Cairo's official taboo list: any story about the National Liberation Front inside Greece; full reports on the Jewish-Arab question.

Cairo correspondents were inclined not to blame "Jumbo" or the censors so much as London officialdom. The U.S. press, which for the most part has squirmed silently under increasing censorship pressures, took courage from the stirring of the powerful, slow-to-anger A.P. U.S. newsmen were also heartened last week to hear England's press baron, Lord Rothermere (London Daily Mail, et al.) echo the old cry of Kent Cooper for treaties guaranteeing universal freedom of the press. Declared Viscount Rothermere: "A free press is apparently a greater deterrent to the making of war than anything that can be laid down in peace treaties."

This week came a contributing cause to the A.P.'s anger: personal interviews with Marshal Tito by Reuters' John Talbot and TIME'S Stoyan Pribichevioh, passed by "Jumbo" Wilson's censors. By arrangement with Cairo's military authorities, their stories were pooled to the U.S. and British press. The A.P.'s story remained a dead bird in "Jumbo's" pigeonhole.

The fact remained that 1) British censors were deciding what Balkan news was fit for U.S. eyes to read; 2) Kent Cooper was fighting mad about it.

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