Part 2 — 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.

Responsibility of the Press

Indeed, if Mr. Atkinson will look about him in the Soviet Union, he will see an extension of the idea suggested by Dr. Kuska. As described by Alexander Kendrick at an American-Soviet Cultural Conference in New York recently, the Soviet press is unique. Before the Revolution, there were 859 newspapers in the Czar’s realm, with a total circulation of 2,700,000 and a policy dictated by the Russo-Asiatic Bank. Today there are 9,000 papers in 80 languages with a circulation of 40,000,000 and several readers to every copy of each paper.

Compared to our papers, there are obvious differences: no sensation, no spice, no scandal, no desperate competitive drive for entertainment. The newspapers are all informative, they tend to be typographically excellent, their news is presented in careful, balanced form so that the constant reader is prepared to grasp new developments as they take place. The cultural leaders of the country, scholars, critics, writers and musicians, contribute to the papers.

The principal difference, however, is in their publishers. No paper is published for profit. No multimillionaire can control public opinion. No people’s organization is without a newspaper: trade unions, hundreds of them; national groups; local, district and national government councils; sport groups; youth groups; women’s organizations. They are crusaders, too; not reactionary anti-vivisection crusaders like the Hearstlings here, but stinging critics of public and governmental bodies for sloppy execution of their tasks. And there is a contact between the readers and the papers that would be inconceivable here. Newspaper staffs hold regular meetings with readers to discuss problems raised by the readers and most papers have an annual readers’ conference at which editors make public accounting of their stewardship. The Soviet Constitution guarantees printing presses and stocks of paper to the organizations of the people, such as trade unions, cultural and scientific organizations, etc. It has not remained a paper promise: the press is entirely in popular hands. It operates in a responsible way to further Soviet objectives by stimulating more active support, by exposing failures.

There is, however, definitely no freedom of the press for rent-collecting landlords, bankers, industrial monopolists. The Soviet press is frankly not a formally democratic press but a press of the working people. That no longer bars any important body of Soviet citizens, since exploiting classes no longer exist there. The rule operates primarily to assure an ever-expanding popular participation in the nation’s political and economic life, while it hampers the work of hostile foreign intelligence services. This would hardly seem the fit subject of a diplomatic protest by the British Foreign Office or the U. S. State Department.

A press of that kind would solve most of the problems of “freedom of the press” in our country. It can be attained somewhat short of Socialism, as is occurring in some parts of Eastern Europe. But such a goal must be recognized as a distant one. Its attainment will require the utmost effort of the whole American people. A first step is to spread understanding of the class character and function of the press as a whole.

What Can We Do?

Is there anything we can do about the present super-monopoly control of our press which gags all but a handful of the 140,000,000 Americans? The individual writer can hardly formulate meaningful proposals along this line. Labor itself, particularly the larger progressive unions, the C.I.O. as a whole, and strong combinations in industrial areas where trade union membership is concentrated, must certainly give more thought to the publication of newspapers. To be successful, they will need labor’s formal participation but they must not be limited to trade union scope. On the contrary, they should champion labor’s political and other interests, as well as the interests of the people as a whole. Labor must also seek a more direct voice in the few relatively pro-labor dailies now in circulation, because direct participation will reduce the waverings to which liberal papers tend. Labor must also combat the commodity-news pattern and help create an audience for balanced, trustworthy information. A labor paper should aim at that end.

Beyond that, labor and liberals should consider legislation to ease the present monopoly. Postal and communications subsidies—free mailing, in fact—plus other government aid, should be given to newspapers and mail-circulation newsletters of responsible popular bodies. At the same time, government subsidies should be taken away from the monopoly press; private enterprise should be compelled to stand on its own feet in the publishing business.

Finally, the truth about the American press—that it is the uncontrolled and unlimited voice of monopoly capital—should not operate to discourage constant pressure on the owners to deal fairly and adopt more liberal policies. This is a democracy, whatever its monopoly limitations; the publishers cannot completely ignore voices that are numerous enough and insistent enough. But the pressure should be concentrated where it has most chance to do good: on the powerful pro-fascist press bloc responsible for the worst excesses of our monopoly press. The recent picket lines and boycott of the Daily News in protest against columnist John O’Donnell’s anti-Semitic provocations, demonstrate that results can be obtained. As a matter of fact, the “Fascist fringe” is very vulnerable. A good, strong, nationwide boycott, centering on the more blatantly fascist preachings of the bloc, might very well act as a deterrent and check on both policy and ownership. The curbing of the reactionary bloc would improve the whole tone of the press. This is the nearest thing to an attainable free press objective in the United States, at least for today.

It goes without saying that any realistic effort to improve our press, must operate within the framework of a larger political program. Only a program that understands the necessity for curbing the huge monopolies—even within the limits of the capitalist system—can seriously approach the problem of press freedom. None but a program of independent labor-progressive political action can even aim at this goal. Only a program that takes Socialism as its ultimate objective, will consistently understand and face the problems along the way. This places the heaviest responsibility upon Marxists and class-conscious workers, manual and intellectual, newspapermen not least among them.