Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1945-07-12

ROME (By Air Courier THE Tito
government claims that the institutions
of public communications in YugoSlavia,
such as the press, radio and theater, are
free. BY our standards that is something
of an exaggeration.
Control of the dramatic intake of the
populace consists largely in careful
screening of foreign films to make sure
that no subyersive propaganda Is pre-
scented. We and the British are care
full about what we send in in the first
place. A picture like "Tovarisch," which
spoofed the Communists, would auto
matically be ruled out by us. Occasion
ally, however, we miss point. Nobody
thought of Robin Hood" as being par
ticularly dangerous. Nobody, that is, ex-
cept the Yugoslav censors, who threw 1t
out as piece of royalist propaganda.
The radio Is operated by the govern
ment and does not, therefore, present
any particular problem for them.
The newspaper press is another story.
There is censorship, but it is more than
that. A fair impression of the press
situation throughout Yugoslavia can be
gained from a study of the Belgrade
papers, of which there are two dailies
and five weeklies
The dailies are Borba, the new organ
of the Communist party which is printed
in the plant of a suppressed paper called
Vreme, and Politika, an old paper
formerly of liberal tendencies which
today sticks nearly as close to the party
line as does its competition"
~ *
The editors of all the papers are good
Tito men. This is more than coinci-
dence. In theory, any one can publish
and edit a newspaper; in fact, nobody
can unless the government thinks 1t is
a good idea. For you cannot put out
newspaper without paper, and you can
not get paper except through the gov
eminent. Control of the paper supply
amounts to the power to license publica-
tons 1t is interesting to note that the
Allied commissions graceful but firm
control of the Italian press last year was
facilitated by the existence Of similar
paper shortage.
According to neutral observers with
whom talked during my recent visit to
Belgrade, the government is undoubt-
edly prepared to use this licensing power
with discrimination in order to make
certain that its press is friendly.
know of no actual attempt to start
an opposition paper in Belgrade, but 1t
is reasonable to assume that no such
attempt would get very far. One promi-
nent member of the government. who is
not a member of Tito's Communist in
ner circle and who has several times
put himself on record as favoring toler-
ance and a free exchange of ideas at
this juncture, applied for permission to
publish and has been turned down.
For the journals which hew unquestion-
ably to the party line, however, there is
no paper shortage.
Although newspapers occasionally send
out their own correspondents, virtually
all foreign news which finds its way into
the papers comes from one official news
agency, called Tanjug.
The agency's foreign report is distin-
guished by the volume Of news from the
east and the paucity Of news from the
west This is even more true Of the con-
tent of the papers themselves; much OF
the western news which TanJug does
send out is never printed.
Whereas, during the war accounts OF
Russian victories dominated the front
papes of Borba and Politika day