Seventy-Fifth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BT STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
TODAY AND TOMORROW:
On
the,
Duties of
a Free
Press
ere Opinions Are I* 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBoR, MICH,.
Truth Will Prevail
NEWs PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily ex press the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
URSDAY, MAY 27, 1965
NIGHT EDITOR: MICHAEL BADAMO
Americans Should Not
Support Apartheid
N RECENT YEARS, thousands of Amer-
icans have sacrificed time and proper-
ty--and sometimes their lives-in the
hope that their efforts would insure a
concept of racial equality within the U.S.
which would serve as an example for the
rest of the world.
It would seem that their efforts have
been to a great extent in vain. Not only
does segregation still exist in the U.S.,
but many citizens are guilty of supporting
it in other nations as well.
INSTEAD OF USING the word segrega-
tion, the Union of South Africa terms
its policy for keeping the races separate
apartheid. The South African govern-
ment has, in recent years, strengthened
apartheid to such an extent that native
Africans are excluded from living and
working in 87 per cent of the country.
This has been accomplished through
such laws as the Sabotage Act passed in
1962, which, according to the Interna-
tional Commission of Jurists, reduces the
liberty-of the individual "to a degree not
surpassed by the most extreme dictator-
ships of the Left or the Right." Then, in
1963 the General Law Amendment Act
was passed, legalizing indefinite deten-
tion without a trial.
As a result of apartheid, the Negro
living in South Africa cannot even begin
to know the meaning of equality. All as-
pects of his life are dominated by infer-
iority and prejudice.
oxin Shouldn't
Be Banned
IT IS PROBABLY FOOLISH to fight for
the life of boxing, which may well be
dead. But the sport of boxing should not
be banned.
There are two basic methods to at-
tack a proposal to ban boxing.
One can argue that it is not the place
of the federal government to interfere
with something that does not hurt the
public or the state and has been called
legal and moral far longer and more
often than it has been questioned-re-
member Prohibition, which also tampered
with the individual's choice and judg-
ment.
OR ONE CAN ARGUE that, despite the
pain and the blood and the punch-
drunk veterans, boxing is, in fact, healthy
physically and sociologically when not
carried past its regulations.
Admittedly, boxing is "barbaric"-men
fight. But it is not "slaughter." Young
men train scientifically, eagerly, far hard-
er than most of us study for the civilized
essential of college degree. It is regu-
lated by state boards and medical con-
sultants. Professional fighters are in the
business for fame, for money, for per-
sonal reasons of pride-the same as many
students.
Remember that the boxer knows the
agonies of the ring far more than the
public; yet, freely, he chooses the hard
years of training.
Boxing is in many ways a microcosm
of a society in which there are cocktail
parties more morally barbaric. It is a
tough, painful sport, but it should not be
banned.
-ROBERT MOORE
SINCE HE IS FORCED to attend segre-
gated schools, the education he re-
ceives is not equal to that of the whites.
Even the exceptional Negro is deprived
of a superior education because it is a
criminal offense for him to register at a
white university.
The inadequate education he receives
makes him unable to compete with the
powerful South African white minority
for the better jobs which he would be
deprived of securing regardless of his
schooling by the color of his skin.
Low wages and poorer jobs are the in-
evitable result of this system, which
disregards such qualities as intelligence
and perseverance in its tremendous em-
phasis on race.
APARTHEID IS NOT only a moral issue,
it has international implications as
well. If the U.S. is to retain its present
position, it must maintain its leadership
throughout the world.
Yet how can the U.S. expect to receive
the respect of any nation-particularly
the new countries within Africa-if its
citizens support a policy which is so
contrary to our protestations of equality
for all men.
Although the U.S. government has tak
en a verbal stand against the discrinmina-
tion it is meaningless if U.S. citizens act
in a contrary manner. It is up to each in-
dividual to realize the detrimental aspects
of apartheid, and not help its spread.
APARTHEID IS PRESENTLY being sup-
ported by over 200 American enter-
prises. For example, American banks lent
$85 million dollars to South Africa during
1960-immediately following the killing
of 67 Africans by white policemen. The
University has also invested in South
African enterprises.
During 1961, American investments in
the area increased by $23 million, and
at least $150 million in loans were ex-
tended.
The companies which have indulged in
these investments have made a substan-
tial profit-but even they must admit
that the extremely low wages of the
blacks is the primary factor which has
made large American financial gains in
South Africa possible.
PRIVATE AMERICAN support of apart-
heid is an issue which should be of
interest to all who are concerned with
the moral standards displayed by U.S.
citizens.
By continuing to give financial assist-
ance to South Africa, Americans are en-
couraging a policy which is detrimental
to the well-being and the self-respect of
the Negro, a policy which is vicious be-
cause it destroys any hope of intellectual
or material achievement for the major-
ity of the population.
Americans must support policies which
are as fair as possible to all people, re-
gardless of their color, race or creed,
and must not always place their immedi-
ate financial ambitions over all concepts
of humanity and reality.
WHEN U.S. CITIZENS do this, they will
perhaps begin to show the world that
they act according to-and do not mere-
ly pay lip service to-the words of their
forefathers: "All men are created equal."
-RUTH FEUERSTEIN
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is
a speech delivered bytWalter Lipp-
mann this morning to the Inter-
nation.al Press Institute in London.
By WALTER LIPPMANN
W1HEN I told my friend Lester
Markel what I was going to
talk about today, he threw up his
hands. For I have chosen as my
topic "The Free Press" and I
might as well say at the outset
that I cannot deny this is an old
chestnut.
Mr. Markel said that if I hoped
to say anything new before this
gathering, my best hope would be
to argue the case against freedom
of the press.
However,smuch as I respect his
editorial judgment, i am not going
to follow Mr. Markel's advice. For
my purpose is not to say some-
thing new. It is, rather, to reflect
a little more on what in principle
all of us here are agreed upon.
WE ALL KNOW that the op-
portunity to speak and to print
with even a modicum of freedom
is by itself a satisfying and en-
joyable thing to do. But the fun-
damental principle of a free press
cannot be merely that men have
a right to express themselves. No
journalist can be satisfied to print
a newspaper that has no readers.
Journalism must be something
more than singing in the shower
bath or uttering soliloquies, how-
ever magnificent, to the desert air.
For while philosophers may argue
whether a painting exists if no
human eye beholds it, there can
be no argument that journalists
write in order to be read and that
they are. like Nietzsche who ex-
claimed that he had to have ears.
Thus, journalism is not a solil-
oquy without an audience. More-
over, and this has some practical
bearing in the world assit is to-
day, free journalism is not a
monologue delivered to a captive
audience which must at least pre-
tend to be listening.
AS A MATTER OF FACT, since
journalists and editors and pub-
lishers are men, and therefore
human, and therefore liable to
error and prejudice and to stupid-
ity, a free press exists only where
newspaper readers have access to
other newspapers which are com-
petitors and rivals so that editorial
comment and news reports can
regularly and promptly be com-
pared, verified and validated.
A press monopoly is incompat-
ible with a free press; and one
can proceed with this principle:
if there is a monopoly of the
means of communication-of ra-
dio, television, magazines, books,
public meetings-it follows that
this society is by definition and
in fact deprived of freedom.
A ,free press is not a privilege
but an organic necessity in a
great society. I use the term great
society ,in its original sense, as it
was used in passing by Adam
Smith himself and made current
in this century by Graham Wallas,
who taught in this city at the
London School of Economics.
AS WALLAS used the term, a
great society is not necessarily the
good society which President
Johnson, for example, hopes to
make it. A great society is simply
a big and complicated urban so-
ciety.
In such a great society the en-
vironment in which individuals
act and react is not the visible
world of their homes and their
neighborhoods and their commun-
ities. It is an invisible environ-
ment which has to be reported to
them.
For this reason, a great society
cannot be governed, its inhabi-
tants cannot conduct the business
of their lives, unless they have
access to the services of informa-
tion and of argument and of
criticism which are provided by a
free press.
WITHOUT CRITICISM and re-
liable and intelligible reporting
the government cannot govern.
For there is no adequate way in
which it can keep itself informed
about what the people of the
country are thinking and doing
and wanting.
The most elaborate government
intelligence service is an insuffi-
gient provider of the knowledge
which the government must have
in order to legislate well and to
administer public affairs.
Where there is a turbulent,
pluralistic electorate, the rulers,
the official bureaucracy and the
legislature will be in the dark,
they will not know where they
are and what they are doing if
they are deprived of the competi-
tive reporting and the competing
editorial commentaries and also
the forum in which the spokesmen
of the various shades of opinion
can say their say. This is what a
free press is supposed to provide,
IN A GREAT society controver-
sial laws cannot be enforced suc-
cessfully, innovating policy can-
not be administered, unless and
until the government can find
among the people of the country
a reasonably high degree of con-
sent.
No government is able for long,
except under the extreme, abnor-
mal pressures of a war, to impose
its rule and its opinions and its
policies without public consent.
It is evident that the interests
of a great society extend far be-
yond the business of governing it.
An essential characteristic of a
great society is that it is not
monolithic and cannot be planned
or directed centrally. It is too
complex for that. It has too many
functions.
Its needs are too varied, and
there are no men who have the
minds, even if they are assisted
by computers, capable of grasping
all the data and all the variables
which are needed for the central
planning and direction of a great
society.
INEVITABLY, therefore, by the
very nature of tliings, a great
society is a pluralist society, with
local and regional interests and
activities and organizations. They
are bound to have a certain auton-
omy and some degree of self-
determination, and in some sig-
nificant sense they are bound to
have freedom of initiative and of
enterprise.
In order for such a pluralist
society to work, there must be
available a great mass of data:
the current state of the markets
for labor, for goods, for services,
for ~money-what is and was for
sale and at what price-what can
be seen in the theater; what is
coming on radio and television;
what games are being played and
how they were played and who
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'The paramount point is whether the journalist puts truth first...
won them; what is visible in the
art shows; where one can go to
church and what was preached
there; what is in the lecture halls,
in the shops and department
stores; where one can travel and
enjoy life; who has been born;
who has been married; who has
died. The list is as endless as the
activities of a great society.
Experience shows, too, that the
naked data is not enough. The
naked data is unintelligible and so
has to be interpreted and cross-
interpreted by political analysts,
financial analysts, drama critics,
book reviewers and the like. There
has to be criticism of plays and
books and concerts and television
and magazines and newspapers
themselves. There has to be ad-
vocacy and there has to be re-
buttal.
I MUST now talk about some
of the key problemshwhich present
themselves when the freedom of
the press has been established by
law and when sufficient private
financial resources have become
available to support the publica-
tion of separate and competing
newspapers.
These are the preliminary prob-
lems. They consist of getting rid
of the censor and the domination
of the advertiser and of financial
groups. Then come the problems of
maturity. They become crucial
when the preliminary problems
have in some substantial measure
been solved.
I have in mind, to begin with,
the conflict between, on the one
hand, the public's right to know,
or is may be the public's curiosity
to know, and, on the other hand,.
the right and the need of the
government to be able to deliberate
confidentially before announcing'
a conclusion and in certain cir-
cumstances, especially in its for-
eign relations, the government's
right to a measure of secrecy and
dispatch.
THIS CONFLICT is, I am in-
clined to believe, perennial in the
sense that there is no abstract
principle which resolves it. The
right of the press to know and the
right of the responsible authority
to withhold must coexist.
In my country, we have a con-r
tinual tension between public of-
ficials and reporters about the
disclosure of coming events, what
is going to be announced, what
policy is going to be adopted, who
is going to be appointed, what will
be said to a foreign government.
There is also a conflict about what;
has happened and why it hap-
pened and who was responsible for
its happening.
The tension is between vigilant,
ingenious and suspicious reporters
who haunt and pursue officials,
causing these officials never to
be allowed to forget that they are
withholding information at their
peril, at the risk oftbeing scalped
in the newspapers. It is not a neat
or an elegant relationship, but a
modus vivendi which works toler-
ably well, at least in time of peace.
AN IMPORTANT aspect of this
of this problem is in the field of
crime and punishment. Here the
press is often in conflict with
those whose business it is to catch
the guilty man and to spare the
innocent man and then to give the
man who has been arrested a fair
trial.
The trouble with crime and
punishment as it concerns the
press is that it is too interesting
and too absorbing and too cor-
vincing because it comes out of
real life. Thus, the reporting of the
news of crime and punishment
often runs athwart the adminis-
tration of justice.
This conflict is nowhere near to
being resolved, and consequently
we should at least avoid the sin
of complacency when we contem-
plate the realachievements of
even the greatest of our news-
papers.
AS THE FUNCTION of a free
press in a great society becomes
more and more demanding, we
are moving toward professionaliza-
tion. A few generations ago jour-
nalism was a minor craft which
could be learned by serving an
apprenticeship to a practicing
newspaper editor.
Journalism is still far behind
established professions like medi-
cine and law in that there does
not exist an organized body of
knowledge and a discipline which
must be learned and absorbed be-
fore the young journalist can
practice. There are, moreover, only
the first beginnings of the equiva-
lent of bar associations and medi-
cal societies which set intellectual
and ethical standards for the prac-
tice of the profession.
Journalism, we might say, is
still an underdeveloped profession,
and, accordingly, newspapermen
are quite often regarded, as were
surgeons and musicians a century
ago, as having the rank, roughly
speaking, of barbers and riding
masters.
AS YOU KNOW, as indeed this
Institute is an impressive witness,
the concept of a free press today
has evolved far beyond the rather
simple abstractions of the 18th
century. We recognize today that
the press as a whole must be cap-
able of reporting and explaining,
interpreting and criticizing all the
activities of mankind.
To be sure, not every reader of
every newspaper cares to know
about or could understand all the
activities of mankind. But there
are some readers, specialized in
some subject, who have to be
alerted to important new develop-
ments of even the most specialized
activities, be it in the remote
reaches of astrophysics or micro-
bilogy or paleontology or in the
game of chess.
For this, the profession of jour-
nalism is becoming specialized,
and the editor who presides over
large staffs of local and national
and international specialists, of
The journalist is becoming sub-
ject to the compulsion to respect
and observe the intellectual dis-
ciplines and the organized body of
knowledge which the specialist in
any field possesses.
This growing professionalism is,
I believe, the most radical innova-
tion since the press became free
of government control and censor-
ship.
FOR IT introduces into the con-
science of the working journalist
a commitment to seek the truth
which is independent of and su-
perior to all his other commit-
ments-his commitment to publish
newspapers that will sell, his com-
mitment to his political party, his
commitment even to promote the
policies of his government.
As the press becomes securely
free because it is increasingly in-
dispensable in a great society, the
crude forms of corruption which
belonged to the infancy of jour-
nalism tend to give way to the
temptations of maturity and
power.
It is with these temptations that
the modern journalist has to
wrestle, and the unending con-
flicts between his duty to seek the
truth and his human desire to get
on in the world are the inner
drama of the modern journalist's
experience.
THE FIRST and most evident
of the conflicts is that between
choosing, on the one hand, to
publish whatever most easily ,in-
terests the largest number of read-
ers most quickly-that is to say,
yellow journalism-and, on the
other hand, a to provide, even at
a commercial loss, an adequate
supply of what the public will in
the longer run need to know.
This is responsible journalism.
It is journalism responsible in
the last analysis to the editor's
own conviction of what, whether
interesting or only important, is
in the public interest.
A SECOND DRAMA, in which
contemporary journalists are in-
volved, consists in the conflict be-
tween their pursuit of the truth
and their need and their desire
to be on good terms with the pow-
erful. For the powerful are per-
haps the chief source of the news.
They are also the dispensers of
many kinds of favor, privilege,
honor and self-esteem.
The most important forms of
corruption in the modern journal-
ist's world are the many guises and
disguises of social-climbing on the
pyramids of power. The tempta-
tions are many, some are simple,
some are refined and often they
are' yielded to without the con-
sciousness of yielding. Only a con-
stant awareness of them offers
protection.
Another drama arises in foreign
affairs from the conflict between
the journalist's duty to seek the
truth and his loyalty to his coun-
try's government-between his
duty to report and explain the
truth as he sees it and his natural
and human desire to say "my
country right or wrong." These
conflicts are trying, and for the
journalist striving to do his work
there are two rules which can
help him.
ONE IS to remember President
Truman's advice that if you do
not like the heat, stay out of the
kitchen. It is always possible to
retreat into less hotly contested
subject matter.
The other rule is that if you
believe you must go into the
kitchen, keep an eye on yourself,
keep asking yourself: are you sure
you are still seeking the truth and
not merely trying to win an argu-
ment?
This brings me to my final point
which is that, as the free press
develops, as the great society
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Progress in California
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LAST FALL the vested interests in Cali-
fornia scored two major victories in
their attempt to preserve the status quo.
Through the use of extensive cam-
paign funds they managed to influence
the people of that allegedly sunny state
to repeal a law banning discrimination
in housing and to reject the right of
pay TV companies to use the public util-
ity ]ines.
These actions stifled both the Califor-
nia civil rights movement and the cause
cf reform in the vast wasteland of tele-
vision.
cratic our democracy is and morally legi-
timate our court system is, some recent
judicial decisions can be viewed as vic-
tories for progress and innovation.
Although the fair housing ordinance
is still being appealed in the courts, the
lifeline of pay TV was temporarily saved
last week by a decision of the Califor-
nia superior court that denying use of
utility lines to Subscription Television,
Inc., a pay TV company, was a violation
of the First Amendment.
Court Judge Irving Perluss said that
the arguments against. pay TV reminded
him of the attacks made on the new TV
0,4