Free Flow

Newsmen who want an unrestricted flow of news between nations in the postwar world got good news last week. To most, the press law adopted by the De Gaulle government at Algiers last July, restricting the flow of world news into liberated France, sounded dangerously authoritarian. In Paris last week Andre La Guerre, director of the foreign press services of the French Commissariat of Information, announced that distribution of world news to French papers was no longer a monopoly of the official French Press Agency. That right, said La Guerre, has been extended to all news agencies of the United Nations.*

Meantime the U.S. continued to show a powerful sentiment for world freedom of the press.

P: A State Department proposal that all nations join to guarantee world freedom of the news was approved by Secretary Hull, sent to the White House.

P: In the U.S. House, Arkansas' James William Fulbright introduced a resolution to put Congress on record in favor of international agreements guaranteeing the world press and radio the right to write, transmit and publish news without governmental or private interference, and at uniform communication rates.

P: In the Senate, Ohio's Bob Taft beat Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Tom Connally to the draw by introducing a resolution similar to Fulbright's, which would specifically write world free-press guarantees into the peace treaties.

* Encouraging domestic news in France last week was a statement by Infomation Minister Hneri Teitgen (himself a former member of the underground) that France wants many papers, all willing and able to criticize the Government, and a great free news agency.

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