The Press: Truth in Prague

A good Communist, and an executive of the Czechoslovak Press Bureau, Jiri Hronek continually wondered how the press might be improved. Last week delegates to a Czech newsmen’s congress in Prague found that Hronek had worked out a program to make the Czechoslovakian press perfect—in the same sense as the Russian press is perfect. Excerpts from his statement in the Communist weekly Tvorba (Construction) as reported by the Associated Press:

“The professional journalist . . . must disappear.” So must most sports news. So must big display ads, a hangover from prewar days “when capitalists tried to gain the favor of the newspapers.” Papers should expand their editorial boards to check and recheck “each fact, each sentence, each word, before it is printed.” Who would appoint the checkers seemed to go without saying.