Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1944-01-09
Continued From Page CID

tories in Scandinavia and Russia, and
restricted it to the boundaries of the
Weimar republic. France, Spain, Italy
and Latin America were allotted to the
Paris agency, Havas. American agencies
were restricted to continental and ter
ritorial United States, plus Canada.
Reuters took over the rest of the world.
and asserted, in particular, immortal
rights over news exchanges with Japan
and China
For years, the charge is, Havas sys-
tematically distorted the true picture of
the United States in Latin America
by permitting only discreditable news
to pass, such as items about gangsters
and financial skullduggery in Wall
Street. Reuters was accused of equal
disservice in Europe, Japan and China.
Rebellion against Reuters overlordship
is held by some observers to account for
the rise OF DNB in Germany and Domei
in Japan which have reduced to a.
science the deliberate debauchery of
every news channel in their control.
The American uprising against Reu-
ters began on September 8, 1914. when
Melville E. Etone, general manager Of
the Associated Press, received a tele-
gram from the great Argentine journal
La Nacion, which asked to be supplied
with German military communicates
which Havas declined to forward. One
OF the f1ercest newspaper crusades in
history ended in apparent victory on
October %, 1941, when the ownership of
Reuters ceased to be private and was
mutualzed in the hands of the entire
British press, after the model of the
Associated Press.
Russell Hits Reuters.
But if the agency has altered its or
ganlzation, there is evidence that some
Of its spots remain. Its control of news
within the British Empire has become
particularly evident with the arrival of
American troops in the United Kingdom,
Australia and India. In his report on
last summers tour of five Senators,
covering $4,000 miles of travel in the
war areas, Senator Richard B. Russell
OF Georgia declared that paucity of news
as to the American war effort is zone
source of irritation to our men who are
serving in that large portion of the
world which is under the aegis Of
Reuters
He Travelled for a month in that terri
tory, Senator Russell continued, and ION
some days it would have been difficult
from reading the papers to know that
the United States was participating in
the war at all" The Georgian was par
ticularly incensed by dispatch, printed
in leading Australian paper, which
maintained that empire forces had been
responsible for 80 per cent of the fighting
from the first battle in East Africa
right to the final landing on the Italian
mainland"
Another advantage retained by Reu-
ter's apparently in all outlying parts of
the British Empire except Australia, is
discrimination in cable tolls to the pref
udice of American reporters United
States journalists in Egypt, India, New
Zealand, South Africa, Dakar and the
British West Indies are compelled to
pay to Is times the cable tolls to New
York that are charged against Canadian
correspondents for press dispatches to
Montreal The Australian government
makes up the difference between cents
a word paid by Canadian reporters as
signed to Gen. MacArthur's headquarters
and IL to 141s cents charged to Ameri-
can reporters with the same assignment.
According to Chairman James l.. Fly
of FEC, the subsidization of American
news dispatches by a foreign govern
ment is greater peril to free press
than the imposition of extortionate cable
charges. The arrangement with Aus
tralia is strictly one-way affair, and
press messages from the United States
to Australia still pay the full rate.
Press rates to Montreal are 2 cents
a word from the British West Indies,
Gibraltar, India, New Zealand, South
Africa and the British Isles. Those to
New York from the same points are as
follows: British West Indies, 10 to IA
cents; Gibraltar, liz cents; India, q
cents; New Zealand, 16 cents; South
Africa, 18 cents, and the British Isles, S
cents.
Radio has done much to emancipate
the United States from conditions in the
First World War, when all communica-
ttions to the continent had to pass
through British hands. Today this
country has direct channels by wireless
telephone and telegraph to all European
Allies and neutrals. There is q direct
radio telegraph between San Francisco