The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-06-19
HESE YS
 - B 1--s N. GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY
FREEDOM FOR ADVERTISING

| s
 FREEDOM FOR ADVERTISING
 It used to be that wlfer a citi-
 zen was sufficiently ahgered by the lcourse of events or the conduct of officials, he wrote a letter to the editor. Nowadays, some individ- juals, organizations, and corpora tions, when they have something
 that they want to tell their fellow
 citizens, buy space in newspapers
 and advertise their ideas. They dc
 not do this secretly: they state lwho is responsible for the adver-
 tisement and who pays for it. 1 During the past year, the A &
 grocery stores have battled what
 they call the antitrust lawyers of
 the Department of Justice, telling
 their side of the story so compe-
 tently that public opinion generally
 sides with the A & P. This must
 be very annoying to the Depart
 ment of Justice, which has not
 made out q good case, although they might still do it in the courss Now, along comes the Buchanan 1 icommittee and sends a question !naire to 166 carefully selected firms,
 asking:
 ID. Expenditures for advertising
 services as to each newspaper or
 other periodical advertisement
 dealing with public issues which
 might be the subject of Federal Legislative action) paid for or whose
 insertion was arranged by your organization, please supply details
 in tabulated form under the head ings:
 Date Cost of insertion
 Brief description of matter Where published
 Forward copies of such adver- tisements where available"
 The business of the Buchanan committee is to investigate lobby ing, which is a constitutional dew ice to influence actions of Congress. What the Buchanan committee should try to discover, under the resolution establishing it, is whether existing laws are adequate or in- adequate to keep lobbying clean Congress desires that those who professionally lobby should be known as engaging in this activity However, there is very little that is dramatic, exciting or news worthy in such an investigation. So, the counsel and investigators of this committee have set out to do something more; they are try ing to scare the contributors to right-wing organizations the Re- publican party and the Dixiecrats in the hope that. the support for these organizations will disappear.
 As the Democrats are suffering from the popular revulsion to their left-wing nexus, it is only natural that they should try to hit back. However, this questionnaire, sent only to a select number of com-5 panies and hitting at institutioAall advertising, as it is called, is sofneA thing that involves the fundamental principle of freedom of speech and of the press and should be op- posed strictly on that basis. One of the largest users of institutional advertising is International Latex to which the questionnaire has not been sent. Why?
 The facts of newspaper adver-- Using are available The adver- tisements have been published. It would not be difficclt to get hold of the copy and the dates of pub- lication. Newspaper rates are on file. Anyone with an adding ma chine-or, if he has the intelligence. lead pencil-can compute what these advertisements cost.
 Most of them have to do with certain general theories of Ameri- can life, usually held by Americans from 1776 to 1885,. but now some what confused in the public mind. Wendell Willkie made quite rep utation for himself by publishing advertisements for commonwealth and southern in his fight with IVA. He eventually became a candidate for President.
 My friend, Edward F. Hutton. every once in a while, loses his temper, writes an advertisement and inserts it in a lot of news papers to stir the wrath of the voters of the City voting at a sneciaJ referendum election to be