Chafee Upholds UN on Code for News Gathering Throughout World

University Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr. this week urged the American Bar Association to back up the U.N.'s position for the freer International transmission of news. The U.N. has a convention on the subject waiting for action.

Chafee, who has taught at the Law School for 35 years, headed the Committee on Freedom of Speech and Press of the Bar Association. In the report just issued, Chafee praises the U.N. Convention for providing "concrete measures to enable foreign correspondents to get into countries more easily, to be immune from expulsion for lawful acts, to have access to news sources without discrimination, and otherwise to work more effectively."

"Halts Censorship"

"It prohibits," the Chafee group continued, "peacetime censorship except on grounds of defense, and as to that it forbids the most burdensome practices of censors, such as concealing deletions from the author of a news dispatch and imposing cable charges for the deleted passages."

Chafee noted that "If the News Convention guaranteed complete freedom for foreign correspondents, there would be no hope of its being signed by any of the nations where its provisions are needed. It gives the widest freedom attainable under present circumstances.

Observing that "the treaty contains nothing harmful to the American press or to our citizens generally," the committee defended a French provision on the International Right of Correction. These sections "merely allow a nation objecting to what was said about it by a newspaper of another country to present a statement of its side of the story to the government of that country, which is then obligated to include this corrective statement among its usual governmental press releases.

"Every newspaper is free to print this statement or not, just as it pleases. There is not the slightest compulsion on any newspaper to print anything whatever."