The French Press

In Algiers, as the Allied armies rolled on to Paris, General de Gaulle's Provisional Government took a major step toward the reconstruction of its shattered country. It adopted rules aimed to make the press of liberated France honest and responsible. In the U.S., meantime, France's fanned Journalist Andre Geraud ("Pertinax") published an authoritative book on his country's betrayers (The Gravediggers of France; Doubleday, Doran; $6) with an illuminating chapter on the notorious, cynical venality of the press in prewar France.

"At the hub of the wheel," reports Pertinax, "the Havas Agency handed out advertising contracts. And not merely advertising contracts but the bounty of such gentry whose reputations needed currycombing. . . . The major Paris and provincial newspapers -- some ten at most --got the lion's share. The rest plotted and scuffled to get larger cuts. . . ."

The corruption of France's press began with domestic bribery. "Several times," writes Pertinax, "[Foreign Minister] Georges Bonnet tried to bribe L'Europe Nouvelle, of which I was editor in chief. Five hundred thousand francs would have been readily handed out to the owner for merely discarding one of our contributors whose satiric shafts pestered the Minister." But soon more sinister corrupters were at work.

"Facts which might arouse the nation to its peril were stifled. But anything which could turn Frenchmen against Russia, against the 'Marxists,' against England herself, and also make them look favorably upon the dictators, was hammered home. ... In February 1936 the Fuehrer, through the channel of Bertrand de Jouvenel, was given the opportunity to explain his policy to the readers of Jean Prouvost's Paris Midi. The military reoccupation of the Rhineland was to follow within a few days: as far as propa ganda could go, it was a remarkable performance. . . ."

The shrill French weeklies were completely lacking in subtlety. Says Pertinax: "Candide, Gringoire, and Je Suis Partout might just as well have been gotten out by Goebbels or Starace." They called Roosevelt a Jew and "the century's most conspicuous noodlehead," said "he wants to start a war so as to reestablish Jewish power and deliver the world to Bolshevism, " cried that "at Munich no one has been vanquished except Moscow." In prewar France, concludes Pertinax, "the worst evil wrought by Laval and the rest of them was their allowing German and Italian agents to prostitute the French press."

Rules for Reform. Last June the Pro visional Government ruled that collaborationist newspapers, including those mentioned by Pertinax, shall be suspended and their property confiscated as France is freed. It also alarmed some lovers of freedom by providing for regional press and information committees from which authorization must be secured for the publication of all newspapers and magazines. And in July it set up the French Press Agency, which will have exclusive rights to distribute all news inside France. Though these edicts sound dangerously authoritarian, in view of the record they are probably justified as temporary measures. The new rules should go far to make them unnecessary. Applying to all publications in the new France, they provide that:

1) The names and professions of owners must be printed in each issue (to prevent "silent partners"); the names of all staff members must appear every three months.

2) The owner of the publication should also be its active director, but in any event must accept full responsibility for its contents.

3) No owner may be actively engaged in any other business if that business is the chief source of his income.

4) The publication's advertising rates and the sources and amount of its revenue, must be published regularly. Financial advertising must be plainly marked as such, not disguised as news. No paper may take money from a foreign government except for paid advertisements.

The Advertising Habit. Questioned by TIME in Washington last week, Pertinax pronounced the new rules excellent--as far as they go. But they do not solve what seems to him the basic problem. "In the old times," he declared, "why was it so difficult for the French press to be independent? Because the advertising business was not sufficiently developed, papers had to look to other sources for their revenue. The French people will have to develop the advertising habit or be prepared to pay much more for their papers. And they will have to build up from zero. It will be two or three years before we know the answer."

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