The Press: Freedom’s Birthday

The morning of Oct. 29, 1733 found the village green at Eastchester, N. Y. humming with excited voices, sparkling with banners gold-emblazoned “Liberty and Law.” Voters of the district were out to elect a representative to the Provincial Assembly. Fifty or so of them had shivered on the green since midnight because the High Sheriff, a puppet of tyrannical British Governor William Cosby, had failed to set an hour for the hustings.

The High Sheriff did his rascally best to get the Governor’s candidate elected. When a viva voce vote showed most of the electors for Lewis Morris, whom Governor Cosby had deposed as Chief Justice of New York’s Supreme Court, the Sheriff demanded a poll. Against all precedent, he barred from voting 38 Quakers for refusing to “swear on the Book” to their eligibility. Nonetheless Lewis Morris won the day and the electors triumphantly “waited on their new representative to his lodging with trumpets sounding and violins.”

Looking on hawk-eyed at all this was an earnest German-born New Yorker named John Peter Zenger. Onetime apprentice to Publisher William Bradford of New York City’s only newspaper, the New York Weekly Gazette, he had set himself up as a printer, though continuing to contribute occasionally to the Gazette. When William Bradford, numbed by official censorship, saw Printer Zenger’s frank account of the election he threw up his hands, refused to print it. John Peter Zenger forthwith started a newspaper of his own, the New York Weekly Journal, came out next week with a special broadside describing the election.

John Peter Zenger could set up his stories in type far better than he could write them. But to Governor Cosby the facts of corruption and tyranny revealed were as awkward as Zenger’s syntax. He had several numbers of the Journal publicly burned, threw John Peter Zenger into jail on a charge of seditious libel.

Andrew Hamilton, the Clarence Darrow of his day, came up from Philadelphia for the trial, serving without pay. Mind undimmed at nearly 80, he limped into court and offered to prove the truth of his client’s charges against Governor Cosby.

”Government is a sacred thing,” cried the Court, barring his evidence. ”The greater the truth, the greater the libel.” Darrow-like, Lawyer Hamilton turned to the jury. When he had finished talking to them they were convinced that the Press should be free to speak its mind about government officials within the limits of decency and truth. They set an historic precedent by adjudging John Peter Zenger not guilty.

This week what is left of the old green of Eastchester (now part of Mount Vernon. N. Y.) was to sound once more with orators, solemnly commemorating the 200th birthday of U. S. freedom of the Press. The honorary committee for the celebration included such famed newspaper names as Adolph Ochs, William Randolph Hearst, Ogden Reid, Karl A.

Bickel, Frank B. Noyes, John C. Martin. Chief speaker was to be Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune.

To many a newspaperman it seemed last week that John Peter Zenger’s anniversary could not have come at a more appropriate time. In Washington, NRA and newspaper representatives were still deadlocked over Sections 11 (free press) and 14 (open shop) of the proposed newspaper code. Throughout the land the Press rumbled and shrilled at the spectre of government licensing and union censorship which it saw implied in NRA’s insistence on elimination of these sections. At the Inland Daily Press Association convention in Chicago last week Publisher McCormick and Secretary Edward H. Harris of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association each pointed a fore boding finger at Germany’s Press and at the cringing of U. S. Radio under the licensing lash of the Federal Radio Commission. Editor Philip Sidney Hanna of the Chicago Journal of Commerce shocked many a listener by the vehemence with which he cracked down on the New Deal.

Cried Editor Hanna: “. . . Did any of you ever remotely think that the day might come when the Government would try to license newspapers as General Johnson proposed? . . . General Johnson was quoted as saying last week that it was ghastly humor for a Wall Street publication to point out how NRA has failed in the small communities. If the day has come when it is ‘ghastly humor’ for the Press to try to get the truth about the acts of its elected and appointed officials be fore the people, you just know that Democracy is on its way out and Fascism is on its way in. . . .

“I fully expect government ownership of newspapers to be an issue in the 1940 Presidential campaign if the New Deal goes on unhindered. . . .”

Meanwhile in Washington a torch of would-be martyrdom to government censorship sputtered dismally out. James True is a white-haired, pince-nezzed newsman who has pattered apologetically in & out of Washington press conferences for many a year. Lately he gave up regular correspondence for several trade journals, began writing a “confidential news letter” called Industrial Control Reports. Last fortnight General Johnson charged James True with filling his letter with ”Misinformation and sabotage” of NRA, barred him from future NRA press conferences (TIME, Oct. 23).

Editor True shouted “Censorship!” He said he would be at the General’s next conference anyway. Last week some 200 excited newsmen saw him get no further than the door, despite a telegram from Grocery Trade News calling him its accredited correspondent. At the conference General Johnson, looking calmer and neater than usual, denied any intention, of censoring genuine press members, said he objected only to misrepresentation of NRA by “confidential” writers who got their information by posing as accredited representatives of newspapers or trade journals. That day the correspondents’ admissions committee barred James True from House & Senate press galleries. Next day the Business Paper Correspondents’ Committee dropped him from its rolls.