If a programme is wanted to achieve these aims, the much discussed five-point programme put forward by Old Timer in a letter in 1951's first issue of Salient could scarcely be bettered. Salient, he said, should aim to lead students in fulfilment of their responsibilities and maintenance of their rights, keep them informed of college and outside events, act as an honest muckraker, stimulate intellectual controversy and create a college-consciousness.

Salient's Past

The concern for events outside our own brick walls appears to disturb Messrs. McLeod, Hatton and Hill. But Salient's first editorial pointed out that Salient replaced predecessor Snad for the precise reason that "It was felt the spirit of the times demanded that any suggestion of Olympian grandeur or academic isolation from the affairs of the world should be dropped and replaced by a policy which aims firstly to link the University more closely to the realities of the world."

In 13½ years of existence Salient has not done badly. But I certainly do not believe it should relax in the slightest degree from its traditional role. The daily presa is a powerful force and in the battle of ideas it throws its weight firmly (and daily) on the side of possessions and privilege.

When John Swinton retired from the position of editor of the "New York Times" in 1946, he had a great deal to say when someone rose to toast the "Independent Press!" These were his words:

Men Behind the Scenes

"There is no such thing as an independent Press. You know it, as I know it. . . . I am paid 250 dollars a week to keep my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. . . . The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell himself, his country and his race for his dally bread. . . . We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. . . . Our talents and our lives are the property of these men."

Swinton is not the only great American to say things that needed to be said about the American Press. In the autumn of 1940, when American publishers decided to hold a "National Newspaper Week," the "Editor and Publisher," organ of the newspaper publishers, planned a special issue in honour of the "free Press of America" and asked a number of prominent citizens to contribute statements that would "emphasise America's fortunate position with respect to a free Press." One of the persons thus approached was the great writer Theodore Dreiser.

Dreiser duly replied. But his article did not appear either in the special issue of the magazine or in any of the subsequent issues. The bald truth about the "free" Press of America, as set down by one who had first-hand experience of it, was distasteful to the press-moguls sponsoring the "national newspaper week." What did Dreiser say? Here is the letter he wrote to the "Editor and Publisher," dated September 18, 1940:

The Free Press

"Your letter of September 9 outlining the plan of the 'newspapers of the nation' to 'bring home to America the blessings of her free Press' by the 'observance of a National Newspaper Week, October 1 to October 7' and selecting me among others for the honourable task of preparing a "brief expression of appreciation of one of the most vital bulwarks of American freedom, an uncensored Press,' is before me. What between sheer awe of the corporation gall which unquestionably prompts and no doubt finances this industrious labour of yours, and wonder as to how, at this late date, I still come to be on your National Corporation sucker list, I am fairly flattened—not flattered.

"For as you know, or should know, I was in the service of various American newspapers as a reporter and travelling correspondent for five years of my life; also editor-in-chief of four advertising-kept magazines for five years more—so I ought, to know something about the blessings of a free Press. And again, before I was ever, a newspaperman even, I was a citizen of Chicago when Mr Cleveland sent 3000 Federal troops into the city to protect the robbing and thieving railways of that day from their underpaid and ill-used workers, and I noticed then with interest and some rage the editorial and news barrage laid down by the leading papers of Chicago and elsewhere on behalf of the suffering railways and against the workers. And ever since, wherever labour has been employed and has struck for decent treatment, I have noted and frequently written about the zest with which our liberty-loving Press invariably sprang to action on behalf of capital and violently against labour. Also in favour of every criminal monopoly programme of our corporations since.

"I assume, of course, that you never hoard of a book of mine called 'Newspaper Days'—nor another called "Tragic America'—promptly suppressed after one month of circulation—and a sale of 5000 copies. But I wrote then: Should you come to know, to expose the very lack of this liberty-loving Press in our national life and at the same time the criminal doings of our national monopolies which today, having grown finally ponderous with stolen money, and so supremely authoritative in our American affairs of government and liberty, prompt (if they do not directly finance) such a brassy burst of propaganda as your letter outlines. Really if it weren't because of awe (inspired by this latest corporation gall stone cast at a long suffering public) I should shout with laughter at your stupidity.

Corporation Control

"For you know that the corporations of America which control our newspapers and radio (as well as our politicians, a large majority of our judges, our State legislators, Congressmen, governors, mayors, police, chambers of commerce, banks, ministers and small loan-controlled merchants), are now planning to stage this fake demonstration of yours with the hope of either frightening or fooling the genuinely libertyless masses into imagining that there many be somewhere in America at least a percentage of the people who can say what they think and read what they would like to read without job or financial loss. . . .

"Try, if you choose, to get some favourable mention, or any mention of any Innocent labour objective in the 'N.Y. Times' or Tribune,' any Philadelphia paper, any Pittsburgh or Chicago or Kansas City or Loo Angeles or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle paper. I have tried. The corporation lice are of one mind and one pocket book, and liberty of the Press means to them liberty to praise the works and schemes of our American and international corporations. . . .

"If Americans know how far we have already gone toward abolishing our democracy they would rise in anger now in defence of their most precious possession. But millions don't know, because the only sources of information they have deliberately kept them from knowing. . . .

"Actually, if this were a really liberty-protected country—one not ruled by a greedy band of profiteers, you and your paper might well be charged with fraud in this instance, and, if you ventured to take a court oath in behalf of your innocence, convicted of perjury.

"Public Enemy"

Nearer home, in November, 1944, the Australian journalist A. E. Mander published a scholarly and well documented booklet entitled "Public Enemy: the Press."

The booklet caused a great stir in Australia. It met with an angry reception in the Press (of course) and within no more than an hour after it was put on sale it disappeared from the bookshops. It later transpired that the whole edition had been bought up and withdrawn from sale by agents acting for certain individuals who were interested in preventing Mander's exposures from reaching the general reader. A second edition had to be printed, and the publishers had to take measures to distribute it through bookshops which were independent of newspaper syndicates.

Mander's book has some harsh truths to tell. It is of especial interest to us because it contains rich facts illustrating what this muchtrumpeted freedom of the Press really represents.

"Freedom of the Press," he says, "is widely accepted as being, as a matter of course, an essential feature of democracy. The social value of freedom of the Press is taken as axiomatic. Freedom of the Press is looked upon as one of the most precious—and most sacred—of all the rights which 'we' enjoy. Unfortunately it is only an empty phrase. There is no such thing in reality." (Page 5).

Freedom of the Proprietor

The author puts the word "we" in quotation marks because somebody really does enjoy freedom of the Press. It is not, of course, the typographical workers, for they set and print whatever is given to them. Nor is it the editors, special writers, or reporters, for they may write only what the publisher who hires them wants them to. Freedom of the Press is enjoyed only by the small group of men who own the Press and control it. Mander therefore says it would be more helpful to drop the phrase "freedom of the Press" and substitute another for it: "Freodom of the Press proprietor."

In one of his chapters Mander analyses the financial control of Australian newspaper. He gives a list of newspaper-publishers through whom the Press is closely interlocked with industry and finance. Newspaper proprietors have their own censorship and a very stringent one too. Actually it covens everything printed in the papers, from articles down to the smallest news item and even advertisements. It applies both to the moat trivial points and to vital political issues.

"The proprietor's censorship normally bans all items of news reflecting to the discredit of any large advertiser in the paper. . . .

"It censors any news or views which might reflect adversely on any company in which the proprietors or his relations or friends hold shares.

"Again, the proprietor's censorship applies to politics. It censors the most telling points of speeches made by public men—if they are associated with a policy to which the proprietor's interests are opposed. . . .

"The Press proprietor (the controller) sets the general 'policy' of the paper—to support this and oppose that; to 'build up' one public man and to 'play down' or discredit another; to give lavish publicity to such-and-such a movement, and to 'freeze out' something else; to publish prominently everything which is calculated to swing the sympathy of readers in some particular direction, and to suppress (or relegate to the bottom of a column on an unimportant page) anything which might have the opposite effect." (Page 28 36).

In a chapter entitled "Pretence of Fairness," Mander describes what the owners of the Press really mean by "fair play."

"To them, presumably, fair play includes the censorship and suppression of news which might influence readers against the views of the interests of the Press proprietors. It includes the use of misleading headlines. It includes the colouring of reports, taking sentences out of their context, twisting a speaker's words, even attributing to a man words which he never uttered. It includes the publication of an absolutely false statement featured on the front page under flaring headlines . . . and a correction on the following day, but this time only a few lines tucked away inconspicuously somewhere near the bottom of a back page." (Page 47).

Press and Suppress

Anyone interested in the use of the English language could cite examples noted from his experience of this sort of subtle lying. Our New Zealand newspapers are no more free from it, nor from the financial ties, than are the American and Australian ones.

Even our sometime "Labour" paper, the "Southern Croas," gave us a most significant example when it printed an item on 20/12/48 under the title "North Koreans Prepared to Use Force" which read: "Mr. Chang, Foreign Minister of South Korea, served notice today that his government would use force if necessary to bring North Korea under its control"! Scotney's "Studies in Anti-Soviet Propaganda" quotes numerous cases of distorted and false news items from the "Dominion" and the "Evening Post" gathered from over 30 years.

At times of national tension such tricks multiply. The Press treatment of the conscription issue in 1949 interested me particularly, and I have kept a fairly comprehensive file. One glaring case of slanting was the "Dominion's" giving nine inches with a single-column headline on 27/7/49 to the reaffirmation by the 2nd NZEF Association of its anti-conscription policy, and when, the next day (as a result of gross intimidation by a departed statesman) the Association changed its mind, the same paper's giving 16 inches with an eyecatching two-column headline at the top of the page, as well as eight inches of editorial space on the 29th! That was one of the Press's least offences in that sordid campaign. A pamphlet about the referendum concluded a section on the part played by the big dailies with these words: "Thus did the great principles of Freedom of the Press operate during those months in 1949. It gives a clue to the general reliability of newspapers at all times."

The gagging of the Watersidere' case in the current dispute, and the vicious law giving expression to a situation that already existed as far as the Press was concerned, serve but to underline these remarks.

Our Press is not free, it is not honest, it is not fair and it is certainly not democratic.

What is Our Duty?

What, in the face of a daily paper curtain around the truth, is the duty of a student Press?

Surely our first duty is to seek to counteract the bad influence of the interested Preen, as Mr. Combs has suggested. Students claim to be especially qualified to make objective utterances, to see things clearly—because they are trained to study, to seek for knowledge, and to think with precision.

For that reason, it is our duty to print what the daily Press will not print, when we know it right. It is equally our duty to decline to be a mere pretentious echo of the daily Presa, to repeat in more intellectual tones the screamed prejudices of capitalism.

Victoria College has often come under fire from the powers that be because it has fostered independent thought and freedom of action and utterance. Controversy must be the life-blood of any university. Our tradition is not a shackling thing, as Salient's editor seems to think, but a living thing, a spur to active thinking against the easy flow, of the stream. When Mr. Parr, Sir Will Appleton, "Freedom," "Truth," and all the rest of them are attacking us, we know we are not going far wrong.

Salient must never let go the burden of her duty.

—C.B.