Put Up or Shut Down

Seizure and censorship have long been the unhappy lot of Saigon's newspaper publishers. Now the government of South Viet Nam has assumed the power to put them out of business altogether. Last week the number of daily newspapers in the country stood at 29, after 13 folded from failure to meet strict new financial requirements imposed by President Nguyen Van Thieu.

Given a six-month mandate by the National Assembly to rule by decree, Thieu announced in August that every newspaper would have to put up a $47,000 "deposit" in order to publish. From this fund would be deducted fines of up to $12,500 per infraction for "undermining national security," an ill-defined offense that has in the past included such sins as reprinting military reports from the foreign press--even when those reports have been cleared by Vietnamese censors. Trial is before a military court, which can also impose jail sentences with no appeal. Decree 007 presented a put-up-or-shut-down dilemma for Saigon publishers, most of whom operate on a shoestring. Thieu's intent was twofold. For the short term, he wanted to kill outright at least some antigovernment papers. Looking further ahead, he wanted to use his temporary decree power to restrict leftist propaganda opportunities in the event that a cease-fire is agreed upon and lobbying begins for a coalition government.

Small Solace. When only a handful of publishers met Thieu's original deadline for complying with the deposit demand, he relented slightly; the time limit was extended two weeks and the interest rate on the enforced deposits raised from 1.5% to 12%. That was small solace to the publishers, most of whom have had to borrow the money from local banks at 24% or more. The 28-member press council that represents the nation's newsmen and publishers resigned en masse, protesting "the heaviest penalties ever heard of in the press history of South Viet Nam."

The 29 surviving dailies--17 Vietnamese, eleven Chinese and one English --have no illusions about mounting heavy attacks on Thieu. Decree 007 also declares that if two editions of any paper are seized for alleged security violations, the publication can be shut down indefinitely, even if neither violation has been brought to trial.

"The first time I am seized," says Publisher Vo Long Trieu of the opposition Dai Dan Toe, "I will stop pub' lication. I can't afford to lose my deposit, and the government knows it." The triple threat of censorship, seizure and shutdown will force editors to be more circumspect, but most take Decree 007 philosophically. "What does it matter," asked one last week, "whether you have two or three nooses around your neck? One is enough to hang you."

Actually, Thieu's hostility to the press has some justification. Saigon's newspapers have a long record of irresponsibility, and some operate only to practice partisan politics and character assassination. None has made significant profits, and the demise of a dozen or more under the deposit rule may ultimately help rather than hurt the press establishment. But Thieu made sure that the shakeout, in the name of national security, bore harder upon his critics than his supporters. Among the papers forced out of business were six of the eight opposition dailies; the two anti-Thieu survivors had both folded earlier.

Their revival sparked suspicion in Saigon that the government had induced them to continue publication as showcase critics. But one of them, Dien Tin, was fined $2,300 last week for printing a Cornell University study on the effects of bombing in Viet Nam, which had not been cleared by the government and therefore "undermined national security." In addition, the paper's managing editor was sentenced to a year in jail.

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