The Meaning of Freedom

In Geneva's stately League of Nations palace, biggest building in Switzerland, the United Nations held its biggest international conference--on the world's press. Three hundred and fifty delegates from 67 nations (including 55 U.N. members) could look out last week at lofty, snowcapped peaks as they argued about lofty principles for world freedom of the press. As usual when good, bad & indifferent fellows get together, not all the debates were on an Olympian plane; there was much bitter name-calling about press warmongering, censorship, monopoly and suppression.

Fumble. The strong U.S. delegation, headed by William B. Benton, got off to a weak start. It introduced a resolution calling for "the fullest possible" freedom for foreign correspondents to go wherever they wanted. Polish Delegate Victor Grosz then made an embarrassing point: in the past two years 250 American correspondents had been admitted to his country, on as little as two days' notice. But, he said, one Polish journalist had been waiting since Jan. 27 for a U.S. visa.

From Manhattan, A. B. Magil of the Communist Daily Worker pressed the point deeper. He had applied for a passport to visit Palestine, and the State Department had turned him down (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Magil fired a cable to Geneva, asked the U.S. delegation if it really meant what it said.

The delegation promptly recovered the State Department's fumble. It cabled the department and Communist Magil got his passport. (He threatened to make another fuss at Geneva unless another Worker reporter got a passport to cover the Italian election April 18.)

Recovery. Last week, by way of recovery, the U.S. delegation won a major victory. It was a victory of words, but the words were important; they spelled out the meaning of press freedom.

Before the conference policy committee, the U.S. delegation introduced a resolution providing that 1) everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought and expression, 2) newsmen shall have the "widest possible access to sources of information" and be permitted to transmit copy without "discriminatory limitations" and 3) governments shall make "a diversity of news and opinion available to the people."

Russia tried to handcuff this resolution with an amendment that news should be a propaganda weapon "for eradication of Fascism and Fascist ideology," a handy way of justifying the Kremlin-controlled press. Stooging for Russia, Polish Delegate Grosz, wanted U.S. newspapers condemned as "warmongers." The amendment was beaten 27 to 5, the five being the Russian bloc (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine and Yugoslavia).

Then the policy committee quickly approved the U.S. resolution by a similar vote. The tally showed what might come out of the Geneva conference. There would not be world-wide agreement on U.S. ideas of freedom of the press. But there seemed an excellent chance of agreement by the majority of nations outside the Iron Curtain.

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