The "free press"

by George Marion

World Conquest

American news domination of the world was now assured. The “non-exclusive” principle did not in the least destroy the cartel; it merely made the cartel an instrument of American policy. The old system of recognizing political controls remained to some extent, in that Reuters, for instance, retained the dominions and protectorates as partially privileged territory. But a new system became the dominant one. The new system opened territories once dominated by Britain, France and Germany, to American news penetration, just as the basic industrial-military potential of the United States was beating the way for American political-economic penetration into those sacred preserves. The “non-exclusive” principle governed the new contract. The term sounds very lofty and moral. It seems to mean that A.P. and Reuters would compete everywhere on equal terms and let the better man win. Not only that, but A.P.’s American rivals would have the same chance.

Alas, it meant nothing of the sort. The principle merely established a new kind of monopoly in which political intervention of the State on behalf of the monopoly no longer was so blatant. Competition was still sharply restricted—not by cartel agreement but by economic pressure. A.P. informed Reuters for instance, that the British agency was absolutely free to deal with U.P. The new contract guaranteed that and so did A.P.’s agreement with U.P. But, said A.P., if Reuters chose to exercise that freedom, A.P. would choose to deal with Reuters’ British rival, Exchange Telegraph, and so destroy Reuters! A.P. also informed Reuters it would have to deal with Canadian Press through A.P.: thus, Canada passed from the British to the American Empire!

That wasn’t really the end. World War II put the period on the new contract. Havas crumbled all-at-once-and-nothing-first like the wonderful one-hoss shay. Reuters’ internal crisis matured and in 1941 the agency was liquidated as a private profit-seeking body. It was reorganized as the British equivalent of A.P. Within the Empire it is struggling for survival against terrific American pressures, just as the Empire itself is creaking under American expansionist strains and the impact of the rising liberation forces released by the anti-Axis war. Sideswiped as a British government propaganda agency in a semi-official State Department document recently, Reuters indignantly denied the charge. In doing so, it acknowledged the British surrender to the American commercial-sensational news pattern which it resisted for so many years. Said Reuters chief Christopher Chancellor: “We are not purveyors of British news; news cannot be British or American—it is an international commodity.”

The German D.N.B. has, of course, been liquidated. So has Japan’s Domei. An American-sponsored German Agency, D.A.N.A., has been set up in U.S.-occupied Germany with favorable competitive advantages as against the British and French agencies. U. S. Treasury funds have been used openly in the battle for news control of Austria and other countries. In Japan, under exclusive American occupation, American news dictatorship is assured. With Britain restricted to Southeast Asia, the whole Far East is rapidly becoming an American private preserve. And not even the limits of the thinly-concealed modern American empire provide boundaries for the American news empire.

Only the Soviet Union and the new Eastern European democracies, together with the anti-imperialist forces within the dominated territories, stand in the way of complete global sway by the new empire-aspirant and its news monopoly. Against them, the “free press” monopolists are mobilizing the blackmail batteries of atomic diplomacy. “It is unthinkable,” declares Kent Cooper, “that the peace will not be dictated by America and Britain and that there should not be included in its terms the principles affecting the press as I have outlined them.”

Chapter VI
RESPONSIBILITY—A CHALLENGE TO THE PRESS

If World War I was a complex struggle for redivision of the world between two imperialist groups, World War II was still more complicated. An effective alliance of all forces opposed to German-Japanese enslavement of the world was achieved. Yet behind this alignment a good many battles were fought for imperialist advantage.

The capitalist powers had joined with the Socialist Soviet Union in a Grand Alliance, but the military activities of Britain and the United States indicated that their whole heart was not in the arrangement. The Soviet Union was permitted for three whole years to carry the burden of the fiercest assault known to history; under British pressure, the Anglo-American military power was distributed along the relatively inactive Empire lifeline. Thus, in effect, the allies fought Germany with one hand and with the other built up positions from which to crowd and “contain” the Soviet State.

Within the Anglo-American camp there was likewise double dealing. Each party maneuvered with a view to postwar advantage for No. 1 at the expense of his “gallant ally.” Early in the war, Washington could boast that there was no need of a Second Front since there were already a Third, Fourth, and even a Tenth Front. This merely revealed that United States forces were scattered all over the globe with little relation to the needs of the alliance but with obvious effects on future adjustment of Anglo-American differences. As part of the “war effort” for instance, a contract was made to build and operate an American military airfield in Arabia, across the gulf from Persia, for three years after the war. This was but the expression of a series of deals with Arabia, notably for oil, by which the U. S. became dominant there while Britain was forced back into second place. The phenomenon was worldwide.

As a result, American imperialism feels superbly assured of its present strength. That assurance is demonstrated by our current atom-bomb diplomacy. All loan and other negotiations stress the determination of our profit-swollen trusts to impose their rule over the world. In the process, the British are often forced to divide former private preserves, such as southern Iran, and virtually to abandon competitive rights in huge areas once under their chief control, such as China. The American methods tend to be oblique: military and technical missions are established in the country in question, “upon request.” No request, no loan. This method replaces the crude “Opium War” pattern in which Britain built and maintained the world’s greatest empire of the past. But the same bloody suppression of “natives” is behind both methods. In recent months the British have slaughtered Greeks and Indonesians; unwilling Marines have made Lidices in North China.

A dispatch to the New York Times from Athens helps illustrate the new method. After noting that the United States is far from withdrawing from Greece, the dispatch says: “The State Department’s comments ... sounded much like what the British had been telling the Greeks for some time.... It is believed that the only substantial difference between British and American views relates to the extent to which Allied officials should be injected into the Greek civil administration. The British originally intended to ask for a practical veto over acts of the Central Bank and Ministries dealing with economic affairs. It is now suggested that the British will suggest something much closer to the concept enunciated by the State Department yesterday: technical assistance to Greece ‘upon the request of the Greek Government.’”

In effect, as in Kent Cooper’s 1927 contract, the word “exploitation” has been removed, but the imperialism is still there. And among the industries making great headway in all “assisted” countries is the American news industry. It is favored by the change in the ownership of communications. Britannia no longer rules the waves—either of the air or the sea. Telephone, telegraph, cable dominance is no longer hers. Aviation, radio, multiple-address newscasting and facsimile broadcasting, are off to a good start under the control of American interests. And whatever advantages British imperialism still has, she is forced by the State Department to relinquish in return for a loan. Cable communications with British Empire points, for instance, are still in British hands. Yet not long ago conferences were held in Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro at which American government representatives compelled the British to cut press cable rates from New York to Empire points. This admitted American opinion-forming “news” to at least equal status with similar British propaganda in the Empire itself.

Now the government is also going into the business of distributing “news about America, by Americans.” The news agencies contend that a government information service is “propaganda,” whereas they “distribute the news as such, wholly unbiased and without intent to influence.” This is an empty boast. Riegel, in Mobilizing for Chaos, says: “The press associations differ in the amount of direct government control affecting them, but all are obviously governed by the newspapers they serve, and the destinies of all of them are inseparably united with the destinies of the nations with which they are identified. An impartial international news-gathering organization does not exist.” The Report on Freedom of the Press calls news-export an “adjunct of diplomacy and national policy. This inevitable relationship is no less real in the U.S. for having been avoided by the government, resisted by industry, and needlessly confused by imaginary threats of encroachment upon the First Amendment.”

State Department, A.P., U.P., I.N.S., alike provide “opinion-forming” material designed to further the current dangerous drive for American imperialist rule of the world. They are at one, moreover, in pressing foreign news services to abandon their present spheres of influence in favor of the American news monopoly. The Soviet news system, which checks the functioning of outside opinion-formers in the Soviet Union and helps limit their activities in Eastern Europe, is their favorite target. But they have made little headway there.

When Randal Heymanson of the North American Newspaper Alliance visited Czechoslovakia last year, government spokesman Dr. Theodore Kuska talked with him. Dr. Kuska said the Czech film industry would be nationalized and newspapers would be published only by political parties, trade unions and similar responsible groups. “Only in this way,” said Dr. Kuska, “can the press be regarded as truly free.”

It is not recorded whether the N.A.N.A. representative swooned on the spot. But for the benefit of Brooks Atkinson, it should be pointed out that some of the responsible groups Dr. Kuska speaks of cannot even be heard in the American press. The conditions earlier described prevent their publishing papers or obtaining circulation of their views. Thus, control of the press and control of opinion is rigidly frozen into monopoly shapes here; the Czech proposal seems to promise a much broader freedom of the press.