The Beat That Backfired

In the Rocky Mountain News:

PARENTS ANNOUNCE ENGAGEMENT The Beat That Backfired From London, Jean Allary, veteran diplomatic correspondent for Agence France-Presse, filed what he thought was a big news beat: Dean Acheson had privately assured French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman that the U.S. intends to keep troops in Europe indefinitely.

Paris' afternoon papers broke the story from A.F.P., one of the world's half dozen biggest news services, in Page One headlines. It was perfectly timed. The Assembly was still quarreling over whether to back the European Army (see INTERNATIONAL). Acheson's supposed assurance was needed by the Faure government to quiet the Assembly's fears that the U.S. might leave France alone with a rearmed Germany on its hands. But the United Press quickly knocked A.F.P.'s "scoop" in the head with an official U.S. denial, and opponents of the government began to wonder whether the story was a fake to swing votes.

Faure, well knowing that Acheson has no legal power to commit U.S. troops, murmured evasively: "This news is obviously premature." Last week he found a scapegoat for the news story. His Information Minister called in the news agency's director general, Maurice Negre, 51, and suspended him. The government could do so because it pays more than half the agency's bills.

Battle-Scarred Warrior. To newsmen, this was a prime example of the weakness of the French press. To Neegre, it was a big setback in a ten-year battle for freedom of the press. Neegre was a star Balkan correspondent for the French agency, Havas, oldest newsgathering agency in the world, when the invading Germans suppressed it in 1940. In Rumania, Negre promptly organized an underground French information service to smuggle news to the allies, was trapped by the Gestapo and imprisoned. Released in an exchange of prisoners, he feigned loyalty to the Vichy government and worked for its information service while passing intelligence to the Free French in London and Algiers. He was caught again, tortured, and sent to Buchenwald, where U.S. troops liberated him in 1945.

Neegre moved in as chief of other ex-Havas men who had taken over the agency's old headquarters and started A.F.P. as its successor. They wanted to make it independent, but, unable to raise capital, had to get government help. In return, the government insisted on the right to hire or fire A.F.P.'s director general.

Brief Victory. Nevertheless, Negre tried to run A.F.P. as if it were in fact independent. When government agencies sent handouts, A.F.P. conscientiously identified the sources. By its performance, A.F.P. largely managed to avoid the taint of being kept. As a result, by last year A.P.P. had grown even bigger than old Havas, was servicing 41 countries, 2,500 newspaper clients (including North and South American), 120 radio stations. This year it expects to gross 1,080,000,000 francs ($3.1 million) on top of its 1,470,000,000-franc ($4.2 million) government subsidy.

The government has exercised its right to boss A.F.P. before, fired Neegre outright in 1947 for what it called "administrative reasons," but he fought so hard that he was reinstated. When Faure suspended Neegre last week, A.F.P. men were shown again what they had known all along: that the press, no more than a nation, can be merely half free. A.F.P. was already paying for the discovery. The Dutch news agency, A.N.P., which had just concluded a new contract for A.F.P. service doubling the old price, informed A.F.P. that, in view of the government's control, the price ought to be halved.

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