Thirteen months ago, before lunch with three prominent journalists, French President Georges Pompidou remarked: "To each his troubles. Nixon has Watergate, and as for me, I am going to die." None of his three companions—Françoise Giroud of L' Express, Pierre Viansson-Ponté of Le Monde and Roland Faure of L 'Aurore—used the information directly or indirectly while Pompidou lived. Nor did Giroud publish the news that Pompidou was suffering from multiple myeloma (bone-marrow cancer), a fact she had learned prior to the lunch last spring.
That kind of self-censorship, which American and British newsmen find all but incredible,...
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