AIMS OF FREE PRESS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25308, 7 October 1947, Page 7

AIMS OF FREE PRESS

U.N. COMMITTEE’S DEBATE

MRS ROOSEVELT OPPOSES SOVIET AMENDMENT

(Rec. 7 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 5. Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt strongly opposed a Russian move in the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee of the United Nations General Assembly to continue its campaign against “war-mongering.” Russia had moved to amend the proposed agenda of next year’s conference at Geneva nn freedom of information to include the “exposure of war-mongers” as among the basic objectives of a free press. "

Mrs Roosevelt asserted that the'Russian proposal was not conceived in the spirit of freedom of information. It was conceived in the spirit of a controlled newspaper system under which propaganda tasks were assigned to the newspapers. The United States still clung to its right of criticism and disagreement. .

Mr Valerian Zorin (Russia) asfailed Mrs Roosevelt’s criticism of the Russian proposal as “superflcjal and Reactionary.” He said that Mrs RooseJelt had outlined her points quite Bravely, but they did not correspond -o reality. Mrs Roosevelt’s great husgand had signed at Yalta a declaration of the people’s rights, but perhaps the views of the United States Jere not in keeping with such a declaration. United States newspapers were controlled by monopolistic interests, Which were usually ignorant of social Shatters. The remnants of Fascism in several countries to-day tried to inthe spirit of democracy in a wanner quite different from democracy’s true meaning.