The Press: All for One

Never before in modern times had the free press of the world raised its voice in such a thunderous defense of press freedom itself. From Bertie McCormick’s isolationist Chicago Tribune to the global-minded New York Times, from Brazil’s Correio da Manhá to Belgium’s Catholic La Libre Belgique, editors drove their sharpest phrases into the tough hide of Argentina’s Juan Perón last week for his suppression of La Prensa (TIME, Feb. 5 et seq.).

“The soul of a great newspaper is about to be destroyed,” said Editor Robin Cruikshank of London’s News Chronicle in a special broadcast to some 8,000,000 Britons. “That concerns all of us who love freedom. The Argentine is a long way off. We may never have seen La Prensa, but the freedom of all free men everywhere is hurt by such an attack . . . When liberty of the press is destroyed no other freedom is safe.”

An Internal Matter? In Boise, Idaho, the Statesman cried: “The United States is almost an accessory to a crime if it supports Perón in any way, and if it does not flatly denounce the present campaign to destroy free speech and a free press in Argentina.” The Washington Post added: “All over the free world the censor is beating out the newspaperman. One light after the other is being extinguished . . . Is this an internal matter?” The Chicago Sun-Times joined with the Sydney, Australia Morning Herald in calling Perón a tyrant. The Richmond Times-Dispatch saw him as “an unscrupulous demagogue who would not hesitate to play ball with Stalin,” while the Dallas News prophesied that he “can exist only by a constant accretion of power. This, in the end, will kill him . . .”

But, as the Louisville Courier-Journal asked, what could really be done by the free nations about Perón and La Prensa? In London, where meat-hungry Britons have tightened their belts while they dickered over the price of Argentine meat, Humorist A. P. Herbert wrote a doughty answer in the Sunday Graphic:

. . . In the Argentine, where freedom

dies

We still are bargaining for mutton pies

We should have stopped the talks when

freedom fell;

Till Prensa speaks, let us be dumb as

well.

External Pressures. In the U.S., many editors clamored for quick action. The Scripps-Howard papers fumed at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, in session in Chile, for not taking up the question of La Prensa. (The New York World-Telegram & Sun told the pussyfooting council to “get lost.”) The Scripps-Howard Washington News offered its columns to La Prensa’s editors or to any South American journalist who wanted to state La Prensa’s case—a vantage point for argument during the current conference of Foreign Ministers of the American republics (see HEMISPHERE) in Washington. Syndicated Columnist David Lawrence wanted U.N. members to withdraw ambassadors from Buenos Aires. But it was the Chicago Tribune which reminded the press of its own important power. Said the Trib: “All we can suggest toward the end of causing Perón to relent is to see that he continues to receive a bad press.”

Mingled with the anger of editors was the strong faith that La Prensa eventually would triumph over Perón, just as Italy’s Corriere della Sera had outlived Mussolini. “La Prensa apparently has lost a battle,” wrote the Portland Oregon Journal, “but the war for truth won’t be won by Perón, that is certain.” Said the Manchester Guardian’s Acting Editor J. R. L. Anderson: “Señor Perón and his friends can stop [La Prensa’s] presses for a time, but when they have been dismissed to an ugly little footnote in history, the spirit of La Prensa will emerge again, because it is the spirit of man’s self-respect. It can be trampled on, but it can never be killed.”