You're Another

Bill Benton was hot under the collar. For two weeks, as head of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on Freedom of Information at Geneva (TIME, April 12), he had listened to Russian charges of U.S. "warmongering." Last week, he went to Paris and let off some steam. In a speech to the Anglo-American Press Association, Benton said that the Russians had gone to Geneva "primarily to create propaganda that, they hope, will further undermine freedom of expression in the world." By insisting that Russia's repression of the press is freedom and that the freedom of the U.S. press is slavery, they have shown that they are out to "degrade and bastardize" language.

As for Tass, the Russian news agency, Benton had a file of its conference dispatches. "If an American or British or French news agency were guilty of such shockingly one-sided, malicious reporting," said he, "the enraged readers would put it out of business. Tass is the official distorter, the official liar of the Soviet government." Lest the Russians miss his point, Bill Benton had copies of his speech passed around to the delegates at Geneva.

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