Foreign News: Consecrated Press

To gag the Press is crude. Last week club-footed little Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, proudly “consecrated” the German Press to Nazi service. Into his office for the consecration filed 300 of Berlin’s most eminent newsfolk.

“I don’t see.” purred Dr. Goebbels, “why you should have the slightest difficulty in adjusting the trend of what you write to the interests of the State. It is possible that the Government may sometimes be mistaken—as to individual measures—but it is absurd to suggest that anything superior to the Government might take its place. What is the use therefore of editorial skepticism? It only makes people uneasy.”

Dr. Goebbels in the old, crude days of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power used to say that nothing was so good for a hostile editor as “one litre of castor oil” (slightly over one quart) administered by Storm Troopers who then waited and guffawed at the result. Such tactics, copied from Mussolini, were often better than beating, but Dr. Goebbels has no need of them today. He held in his thin, knob-knuckled hands last week a new National Press Law making it a crime to practice journalism in Germany except as a licensed member of a nationwide closed shop. Der Reichsverband der Dentschen Presse, headed by Dr. Goebbels.

The law covers “all persons who take a share in forming the mental contents of any newspaper or political periodical through the written word or pictures.” To get his license a candidate must prove that neither he nor his wife had even one Jewish grandparent, must be a German citizen over 21, trained for at least one year in journalism and “consecrated” to the ideals of Dr. Goebbels. Exceptionally, the Doctor can license anybody to be a journalist, even a Jew.

Under the law newspaper owners and editors are stripped of power to discharge members of their staffs “for reasons of their own,” can and must do so only for reasons of state. Disputes will be settled by a Reich Press Court, the judges to be appointed by Dr. Goebbels. Ended is the peculiar German system under which each newspaper had a so-called “responsible editor”—usually the office bum—who stood ready to go to jail for mistakes or libels committed by the staff. From now on every German journalist is legally responsible to and must uphold the State.

“The National Press Law is the most modern journalistic statute in the world!” cried Dr. Goebbels explaining it to his 300 nervous guests last week. “I predict that its principles will be adopted by the other nations of the world within the next seven years. It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion!”

Reading from the text of the law, Dr. Goebbels proclaimed that it is the duty of journalists to keep out of print:

“1) Anything that intermingles private good and public good in a manner misleading to public opinion.

“2) Matter calculated to weaken the power of the Reich at home or abroad, the community will of the German people, its military spirit or its culture and economy, or that tends to offend religious sentiments.

“3) Anything in conflict with the honor and dignity of Germans.

“4) Matter that unlawfully injures the honor or welfare of any individual, hurts his reputation or draws him into ridicule or contempt.

“5) Anything that is unethical on any other grounds.”

Docile, the German Press reported the National Press Law under such headlines as INDEPENDENCE OF FREE SPEECH and FREE DISCUSSION WITHIN THE SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT POLICY. Foreign correspondents in Germany were reported exempt from the law, but it binds German journalists abroad.

Same day the Hitler Cabinet stretched its power even further, decreed something called the Law Guaranteeing a Peace of Right. Distinct from the Press Law, this provides the death penalty for anyone who imports, publishes or distributes in Germany “treasonable articles.” For importing, publishing or distributing “atrocity stories” (i. e. about Nazi atrocities) the maximum penalty is five years in jail.