With the fall of Czechoslovakia, the world's areas of press freedom were narrowed down more than ever. Nevertheless, the U.S. last week sent a delegation to the U.N. Freedom of Information Conference at Geneva. The State Department had found it hard to fill the team, captained by William B. Benton, ex-Assistant Secretary of State. Part of the trouble had been the State Department itself.
Department underlings had proposed Harry Martin of Memphis, anti-Communist president of the C.I.O. American Newspaper Guild, as a delegate. But he had been turned down by higher-ups as a radical. His sin: in 1938 he had given a...