Tribune Writer Calls For Editorializing in News, at Law Forum

"Judicious editorializing in news columns" might eliminate many of the unfounded and slanderous attacks which have lately entered into news reports. August Heckscher (below), editorial writer of the New York Herald Tribune said last night at the Law School Forum in New Lecture Hall.

Charges like those Senator McCarthy made against alleged Communists in the State Department and Harold Stassen used against Philip Jessup were reported too objectively, Hecksher stated, since they left no indication of any doubt of their truth. He feels that newspapers should give their readers this indication so they can use their own judgment.

The other speakers in the forum on "How Free is the Press?" agreed in general that its freedom is being especially threatened by the government's present censorship policies and the decreasing number of newspapers, especially--in small towns.

President Truman's censorship order evoked a variety of opinions among the speakers, though both Heckscher and Morris Ernst, a New York civil rights attorney, agreed that the objectives of the order were good.

Ernst attacked newspaper monopolies by arguing that truth can only come out of a democratic conflict of ideas. Either chain newspapers or single paper towns can foster these monopolies which are dangerous for the free spread of unbiased facts, he said.

"Abolition by law of chain newspapers might have some merit," Erwin D. Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, agreed. The other speaker, John H. Thomson, vice-president of the New England Newspaper Guild, said that harmful press censorship could also arise from business and advertising interests of the newspapers.