Freedom Fight

The Bill of Rights guaranteed U.S. newspapers their freedom, but it never guaranteed that they wouldn't have to fight to keep it. Last week, Georgia's daily and weekly newspapers were fighting furiously to keep their freedom from being whittled away.

Their enemy was Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge, who had inherited "Ol Gene" Talmadge's hatred for "them lying newspapers." For a while, Herman had tried to fight his press critics with scurrilous attacks in his own weekly Statesman ("The People--Editor; "Herman E. Talmadge--Associate Editor"). Then Herman's men introduced three tough press-control bills into the state legislature.

The bills:

P: Declared newspapers "subject to regulation by the state."

P: Made newspapers subject to libel suits in any county in the state where they had more than 100 subscribers (rather than in the county of publication), a trick to put them at the mercy of Talmadge-controlled rural justice.

P: Authorized the state attorney general to break up any city newspaper monopoly-merger since 1945. Four Georgia mergers fitted this description, but the biggest, most obvious targets were the joint-owned Atlanta Constitution and Journal (TIME, March 27), both incisive critics of the Talmadge regime.

The Better to Hide. Georgia's editors zeroed in on the bills with all editorial guns. Roared the Constitution: "These newspapers . . . will be in existence long after their present staffs and the members of this legislature . . . are dead and gone.

THEY WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED." Thundered the ancient Augusta Chronicle: "Demagogues and dictators always make it one of their first goals to dissolve the free press, the better to hide their evil and their arrogance . . . This campaign against the newspapers is part of an overall plan to establish a political dictatorship . . ."

Even normally pro-Talmadge papers found the bills too much to stomach, wondered why Talmadge feared "honest criticism and honest differences in point of view."

"Make 'em Careful." Taken aback by the protests, the house of representatives turned down the bill calling for state regulation. The more obedient senate rushed approval of the other two, passed them for house action on the last day of the session. Administration Floor Leader Frank Twitty argued that the bills were aimed at newspapers to "make 'em careful" about printing "wild charges and untruths." But even staunch Talmadgites wavered in the face of the newspaper protests.

Herman caught the change in the political wind, decided not to try to push the bills through in the current session. But they were far from dead. Talmadge's political straw boss, Roy Harris, dropped a clue to the new strategy: "I wouldn't pass those bills. I'd hold 'em over the heads of the newspapers."

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