Press and State

Report Outline
Press Freedom and the United Nations
Press as Protector of Individual Rights
State as Protector of Individual Rights

Press Freedom and the United Nations

Conventions Awaiting General Assembly Action

Three Proposed Conventions dealing with freedom of information are to be taken up at the third regular session of the United Nations General Assembly now meeting in Paris. The conventions were framed at the U.N. Conference on Freedom of Information which sat in Geneva from Mar. 23 to Apr. 21, 1948. Each has an important bearing on the relations of governments and the agencies for news gathering and dissemination known collectively as the press.

A Convention on the Gathering and International Transmission of News provides that the nations which accept it will refrain from censoring outgoing news, except for reasons of “national security,” and that if such censorship is necessary, it will be carried out in the manner specified in the convention. The rights of all foreign correspondents to equal treatment would be guaranteed.

A Convention Concerning the Institution of an International Right of Correction is designed to implement a resolution unanimously adopted by the General Assembly at its 1947 session which recommended that the nations explore ways in which “the publication of false or distorted reports likely to injure friendly relations between states” could be combatted. This convention provides that where a state “alleges that news reports likely to injure its relations with other states, transmitted from one country to another country by foreign correspondents or by news agencies and disseminated abroad, are false or distorted,” it may submit its version of the facts to the state in which the challenged report has been published, and that the government of that state shall within five days make the statement available to the information agencies which supply news to the public. In case of failure of a government to act, the Secretary General of the U.N. would be required to bring the answering version of facts to public attention.