Stepping out of a meeting of the Associated Press at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Manhattan, a multitude of publishers stepped into a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Manhattan. Two chief things they found to grow excited about in their 43rd annual meeting.
Gag Law. Publisher Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune presented the report of his Freedom of the Press Committee. Col. McCormick is a he-champion of Freedom of the Press. Last fortnight he indignantly announced the withdrawal of the Tribune's correspondent from Moscow because the Soviet censors would permit only twaddle to be wired out of their perfect commonwealth (TIME, April 29). Last week he fell upon Minnesota's so-called gag law.
This law provides that anyone who publishes "a malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper, magazine or other periodical is guilty of a nuisance" and may be enjoined from further publication. In the fall of 1927 two men started publishing a Minneapolis weekly paper called The Saturday Press. After publishing nine issues they were hailed into court and the publication ordered suspended. They pleaded that the law was unconstitutional. The Minnesota Supreme Court held otherwise. Under the law the two publishers were perpetually enjoined from publishing their "nuisance" under the name of The Saturday Press or any other name. The case is now pending a second time before the Minnesota Supreme Court. If lost there, an attempt will be made to take it to the U. S. Supreme Court.
Col. McCormick described the Minnesota law as "tyrannical, despotic, un-American and offensive," declared that it would place the press in a position where it could be silenced by any corrupt administration. Hitherto the courts have had power to punish libelous publications, but this law gives them power to prevent publications entirely. What is more it enables a whole file of a paper, extending over a period of three months or more, to be placed in evidence, and permits stopping publication entirely unless the publisher can prove every statement that has appeared in all that time—a thing practically impossible on account of expense. Not even a jury trial is granted. One judge by a simple decision can put a paper out of business indefinitely and if thereafter the publisher prints any defamatory statement, whether true or not, the judge can send him to jail for contempt of court.
Gravely to his fellow publishers Col. McCormick declared: "The possibility that such a law could legally be adopted and enforced would cause newspaper properties everywhere to be of small or doubtful value."