You Can't Print That

In Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria last week, 348 North, Central and South American editors & publishers met to organize a permanent Inter-American Press Association with the high-sounding goal of guarding "freedom of the press throughout America." But a more specific purpose soon emerged sharp and clear: it was to forge a weapon to fight press censorship in the Western Hemisphere, notably in Latin America. In a committee report that pulled no punches, the countries where censorship exists and the degree of press repression were ticked off. Peru, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and 13 other countries were all criticized for current or recent attempts to censor the press. But the chief and most persistent offender named by the editors was Argentina.

The delegates were well aware, as the report pointed out, that censorship in Argentina meant the summary closing of newspapers in some cases ("At the beginning of the present year, 50 newspapers were closed in a single day"), and the slow strangling of others deemed too powerful to be done in at one blow.

Loud Cheers. The chief target was La Prensa, one of the world's great newspapers, and its editor & publisher, broadbrowed Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz. A delegate to the conference, Dr. Gainza Paz symbolized for the delegates the fight against censorship, and each time La Prensa's name was mentioned, the delegates cheered loudly.

Peron's campaign against Buenos Aires' La Prensa and La Nation, also anti-Peron, dates back to 1945, when he had Dr. Gainza Paz and Dr. Luis Mitre of La Nation arrested without explanation. They were released after a few hours, but since then more than a dozen ruses have been employed to try to put the papers out of business. Peron has personally urged readers to boycott La Prensa. Laws governing the import of newsprint have been juggled to take paper away from La Prensa and La Nation and give it to pro-Peron papers.

Once, government inspectors forced La Prensa to clear its warehouse of paper and put it in the street, ostensibly so that they could make an inspection of steam pipes. The "inspection" dragged on until rain ruined the newsprint.

Wide Publicity. Recently the government took over the placing of all employment want ads, thereby shrinking one of the substantial revenue sources of both papers. So far, La Prensa (circ. 460,000) and La Nation (circ. 250,000) have managed to survive. But La Prensa has been whittled down from a fat 32 pages to a sick twelve by the Peron campaign.

To work against it--and all hemisphere censorship--the newly constituted Inter-American Press Association decided to mobilize its strongest weapon: the force of public opinion. Henceforth, complaints againt the suppression of press freedom in any of the Americas will bring on an investigation by the association, whose 45 directors include Dr. Gainza Paz. If any country refuses to permit the investigation, that fact will be given "the greatest publicity possible."

If the new technique has any merit, the editors will probably soon have the chance to test it. Already, their plan was under attack in Argentina's pro-Peron press, which called the editors "journalistic gangsters" in the service of the U.S. Government.

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