Evening star., 1949-07-03
BuIwurk of Liberty


ing, the House of Commons voted to es-
tablish Royal Commission of Inquiry into
British journalism. Today, after long
months of study and investigation, the
commission has completed its work with
a report which says, in effect, that Britons
and their government should keep hands
off the press, leaving it free to operate as
it is now operating, despite the abuses
that may exist here and there.
Undertaken under the sponsorship of the
National Union of Journalists, the in
quiry covered the financing, management,
ownership and control of Britain's news
papers and periodicals. 1t dealt also with
the question of whether or not independent
or local publications were up against
monopoly proposition in competing with
powerful chains and syndicates. In ad-
dition, it devoted a considerable part of
its study to charges that financial and
advertising interests were influencing the
presentation of domestic and foreign news,
particularly in the sense that conservative
pressures were being exerted to suppress
or diStort facts in a way calculated to dis
credit the Labor government.
The conclusion of the Royal Commission
is that the British press, as now con-
stituted, has not been nearly SO erring as
some of it's critics have charged and that
official intervention to correct failings
would be a cure far worse than the rela-
lively innocuous ailment. In the words
of the commission, free enterprise in the
production Of newspapers is prerequisite
of a free press" and there is no reason
to think that newspapers attached to
political parties, trade unions or other
organizations would be better newspapers
or have greater regard for truth and
fairness than newspapers published by
private undertakings" Actually, this is
striking understatement for nothing could
be clearer than the fact that a govern
mental or special-intereSt publication is in
evitably, by its very nature, colored by the
kind of bias that is not found in the
general run of journalism seriously seek
ing public support and confidence on the
basis of independence and objectivity.
OF course, as in the case OF our own
press, the British press has it faults. But
the Royal Commission has taken the view
that governmental regulation or control
to do away with those faults would weaken
and undermine one of the greatest of all
democracy's bulwarks-the free, privately
owned, privately managed, privately edited
newspaper. Accordingly, to cope with the
failings of certain publications, the COM
mission has recommended that the jour-
nalistic profession itself, and no one else,
establish General Council" of twenty
five members-fve of whom would be rep
resentatives of other non-governmental
fields-to serve as a kind of corrective
policing agency to discourage abuses and
promote the highest possible professional
standards
The British council idea is much like
the one recommended for American jour-
nalism in the report published two years
ago by the Commission on Freedom of
the Press. 1t is an idea deserving atten-
tion, its major virtue being its recognition
of the fact that if newspapers are to be
policed or regulated in any degree, they
must be policed and regulated by them
selves alone. Governmental authority
cannot enter the field without immedi-
ately posing a threat to the democratic
way of life. When organs of fact and
opinion come under the direct or indi-
rect control of any state, liberty is knitted
in its vitals. The world behind the Iron
Curtain is proof enough Of that