The Press: Tentative Step

For two years—all the way from Lake Success to Geneva and back again—the United Nations had been arguing about an international covenant for freedom of the press. Last week, when the General Assembly finally approved the world's first treaty on the subject, it hardly seemed worth all the argument. The "Convention on the International Transmission of News and the Right of Correction" was just strong enough to make it certain that the Soviet bloc would never ratify it. But it was so weak that the U.S. would have little reason to ratify it either, after it is submitted to the nations...