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 for signature next fall.

As approved by a 33-6 vote at 2:30 a.m. (after an hour’s harangue by the U.S.S.R.’s Andrei Gromyko, who thought the treaty merely a convenience for the “warmongering” U.S. and British press), the convention guarantees foreign correspondents free movement between signatory nations, and free access to news within them—rights they already have in all the nations likely to sign such a treaty. It forbids expulsion of newsmen for lawful newsgathering, and prohibits censorship except on national-defense matters. Under its “right of correction,” a signatory country that feels a correspondent has distorted the news can send its own version to his government, which must release the correction to all news agencies but may not require its publication. All in all, U.S. Delegate Erwin D. (“Spike”) Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, thought the treaty a beginning step that would strengthen “agreed principles based on the right of the people to know.”