Under De Gaulle's Umbrella

WIRE SERVICES

Charles de Gaulle's lordly insistence on playing all the international fields has benefited at least one French organization--Agence France Presse. Working under the umbrella of France's cordial relations with some of the world's prickliest countries, A.P.P. men report from 144 nations and territories outside France. Now that the Reuters man in Peking has been placed under house arrest, A.F.P.'s Jean Vincent and Rene Flipo are the only Western correspondents left at liberty to roam the streets as they please in search of news. An A.F.P. man reports regularly from Hanoi, and during the six-day war between the Arabs and Israelis, the agency maintained service from Cairo, Damascus and Amman from war's be ginning through the ceasefire.

In Hanoi, where the A.F.P. has been operating for the past 15 months, correspondents must cope with a virtual information blackout. Newsmen are not allowed to leave the capital, and every dispatch must be shown to the Foreign Ministry before it is sent. A.F.P. cables can take up to 20 hours to reach Paris, where the news agency translates and transmits them in English, Spanish, Portuguese and German as well as French. As a result U.S. announcements of bombings in North Viet Nam usually scoop A.F.P. coverage. The dispatches sometimes sound prejudiced, since they must pass Hanoi eyes, but they do provide on-the-spot, visual confirmation of the raids. In addition, they report the comings and goings of Communist delegations, give glimpses of daily life in the North Vietnamese capital, and provide sketchy bits of information about the country's economy.

A.F.P. is the direct descendant of the Havas news agency, the stodgy progenitor of all agency reporting, established in 1835 by Charles Havas. Used by the Germans for their own purposes, mostly propaganda, during World War II, the agency was forced to start from scratch as a government enterprise in 1944 under the name Agence France Presse. It played a slow, largely interpretive fourth flute to AP, UPI and Reuters for a decade.

Looking Up. In 1954 Jean Marin, a journalist and radio commentator, took over as A.F.P. general manager. Everyone looks up to Marin; he not only stands 6 ft. 31 in. tall, but by 1957 he had established a correspondent in Peking, freed the agency from official French control, and begun to woo the 150 subscribers in 60 countries that A.F.P. has since won. Marin, now 64, has expanded his team of correspondents and stringers by 100. They are free to enter and report from almost every nation in the world except Albania and Guinea.

Realizing that 120 newspapers in Paris and the French provinces are not enough to finance A.F.P.'s worldwide operations, Marin is conscious of the need to expand abroad. Toughest market to crack thus far has been the Anglo-American press. This year A.F.P. at least got its foot in the door when both the New York Times and the Times of London joined its growing list of regular subscribers.

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