PRESS FREEDOM IN AMERICA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 142, 29 March 1948, Page 3

PRESS FREEDOM IN AMERICA

Attack by Soviet Bloc Delegates CONFERENCE AT GENEVA (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright). GENEVA, March 27‘ France and the United States submitted to the conference on international freedom of information drafts of international conventions to free news from national restrictions and prevent discrimination against foreign correspondents. The conference committees will study-the drafts.

France also proposed the establishment of a world council of journalists which would issue an 1 international journalists’ card.

Eastern European delegates opened in the committees a concerted offensive against the American press. The Soviet, Polish, Hungarian and Rumanian speakers declared that it was mockery to speak of a free press in the Unied States, where trusts controlled more than half the press, and 92 per cent of areas outside the big towns had only one local paper. The Communist system guaranteed real freedom.

Mr Harry Martin (United States) said that 83 per cent of the United States’ 1700 newspapers were independent, and only one in five was attached to a - chain. In the Soviet one party controlled one chain from “Pravda” down to the smallest village news sheet.