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Truncheon for Totalitarians. Correspondent Dubois has struck his most resounding blows for unfettered reporting through the LA.P.A. press freedom committee, which he helped to organize in 1951 and has headed ever since at the insistence of fellow members. The committee investigates and documents press-government relations throughout Latin America and wields an effective public-relations truncheon by dropping from membership all newspapers that are proved to be Communist-or fascist-influenced "or have any other totalitarian tendencies."
Last week, in his annual I.A.P.A. report on press freedom, Jules Dubois complained of a governmental stranglehold on the news in five countries besides the Dominican Republic: Paraguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Colombia. "Not next year, or the year after, but some year," says Dubois, "the time may come when the association can say to a dictator or a would-be dictator: 'Stop! You've gone far'enough!'" But Dubois reports that even in countries where newspapers are basically free, even in Castillo Armas' Guatemala, attempts at suppression continue. The moment a free press fears to cry stop, he suggests, it invites new Trujillos.