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 1 * w '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 em i Progress in California 6 J r r 1 /K .z . i t iF! 3 ,, ' T l j T f 7. . , 4 . y1':. a ^ . ..(' ' r',, tT : . 1t :. .rt: { ..i I 4 } "' ^" ., { t [ {J i ,r ty r , " o ยข r kv1 if 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