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The United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information and the Movement Against International Propaganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2017

John B. Whitton
John B. Whitton*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Upon signing the General Act at the close of the United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information, held at Geneva in March and April, 1948, General Carlos P. Romulo, its President, declared that some day that document might be regarded as the Magna Carta of freedom of thought and expression.1 While this view may be somewhat over-optimistic, undoubtedly the Conference showed a balance-sheet of substantial accomplishment. Opening in an atmosphere of deep pessimism contrasting with the brighter ambiance of 1946 when the idea of a conference was launched, the Conference closed with what may be called a victory of limited objectives.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 1949 , pp. 73 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1949

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References

1 United Nations Bulletin, April 15, 1948.

2 See Preamble, Draft Convention on Freedom of Information: “Considering that the free interchange of information and opinions, both in the national and in the international sphere, is a fundamental human right and essential in the cause of peace and for the achievement of political, social and economic progress.’’ See also Resolution No. 1 (Fundamental Principles), United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information (Geneva, Switzerland, March 23–April 21, 1948). Report of the United States Delegates with Belated Documents (Department of State Publication 3150, International Organization and Conference Series III, 5, hereinafter referred to as Report of U. S. Delegates), pp. 21, 25.

3 Ibid., pp. 41, 42.

4 Ibid., p. 13 ff.

5 Ibid., p. 21 ff. See Resolution No. 28 (Freedom to Listen), ibid., p. 34.

6 Resolutions Nos. 29 and 30 (Cheaper Radio Sets), No. 32 (Technical Needs), No. 33 (Newsprint), ibid., pp. 35–36.

7 Draft Convention on the Gathering and International Transmission of News, Art. 4, ibid., p. 16; Draft Convention on Freedom of Information, Art. 2, ibid., p. 21; Resolution No. 12 (Censorship), ibid., p. 30; Resolution No. 13 (Censorship), notably the following: “The United Nations Conference on Freedom of Information solemnly condemns the use in peace-time of censorship which restricts or controls freedom of information.” Ibid., p. 31.

8 Ibid., p. 16.

9 According to Resolution No. 2, the Conference “Condemns solemnly all propaganda either designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, and all distortion and falsification of news through whatever channels, private or governmental, since such activities can only promote misunderstanding and mistrust between the peoples of the world and thereby endanger the lasting peace which the United Nations is consecrated to maintain.” This text was adapted from the resolution offered by eight Western states on April 5, 1948. U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/19. The Conference “recommends that all countries take within their respective territories the measures which they consider necessary to give effect to this Resolution.” Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 26–27.

10 Ibid., p. 34.

11 Ibid., pp. 38, 39; U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.4/SR/14.

12 U. N. Docs. E/Conf.6/79, and E/1050, Aug. 28, 1948.

13 Report of U.S. Delegates, pp. 2–3. In his opening speech, the Chairman of the United States Delegation said: “This is no Conference about money or wheat or radio frequencies, where divergent viewpoints must and should be compromised. This is a Conference about principles essential to free men. It is thus far better for us here to build slowly for the future on the bedrock of principle maintained than to build faster on the shifting sands of principle compromised.” Ibid., p. 3.

14 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/C.4/SE/19.

15 Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 2–3 ; also, p. 43.

16 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/C.2/SB/12.

17 Report of U. S. Delegates, p. 2.

18 U. N. Doe. E/Conf.6/SR/21.

19 For example, see British remarks on the so-called Indian Amendment. Evans, for the United Kingdom, stated that “all governments owed a duty not only to their own eitizens but also to international law to suppress all activities which might prejudice international peace or law and order. Such activities did not always lend themselves readily to definition as incitement to violence or as criminal acts or offences inimical to peace.” U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/CU/8B/18; also, Report of U. S. Delegates, p. 6 ff.

20 “… it is the view of the Government of the United States, that the greatest danger from false or distorted reports arises from monopolies of information … and that State control of the flow of information is inevitably utilized as a propaganda mechanism to further the political aims, both domestic and international, of the existing government.” Ibid., p. 43; U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/13.

21 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/8, p. 2 ff. The Russian viewpoint was invariably supported by the other members of the Slav bloc. Thus the Chechoslovakian delegate declared that in the United States the “radio also was for the most part in the hands of big advertising firms who determined what American people should hear on the air.” Loc. cit., SR/9. The Soviet delegate, after asserting that a disguised censorship existed in the United States, exercised by powerful trusts and cartels, asserted that “In Russia, censorship was subordinate to the successful functioning of democratic institutions, and was exercised in the interests of the broad masses of the people. Censorship was carried out with the aim of eliminating … propaganda encouraging racial, national and religious hatred.” U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.4/SB/9. One of the strongest answers made to the Slav point of view was made by Hector McNeil, delegate for the United Kingdom, who said in part: “The peoples of Western Europe … opposed wholeheartedly any thesis which denied that all men were equal before the law. On the other hand the Slav countries imprisoned anyone who dared improve on the ideas of Marx and Lenin, thus pursuing a doctrine as progressive as the belief that the earth was flat.” U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/6, p. 5.

22 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/7, p. 7.

23 U. N. Docs. E/Conf.6/SR/5, p. 8 ff.; SB/6, p. 7 ff.

24 Supra, note 16; the American position is given in the Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XIX, No. 474 (Aug. 1, 1948), p. 127 ff. See also U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/6, Add. 6, and Report of U. S. Delegates, p. 43.

25 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/G4/SR/9.

26 John, B. Whitton, , “Propaganda and International Law,” Académie de Droit International, Recueil des Cours, 1948 Google Scholar, Chapter III.

27 Report of U. S. Delegates, p. 22. See also Resolution No. 1, par. 7: “That encouragement should be given to the establishment and to the functioning within the territory of a State of one or more non-official organizations of persons employed in the collection and dissemination of information to the public, and that such organization or organizations should encourage the fulfilment inter alia of the following obligations by all individuals or organizations engaged in the collection and dissemination of information: (a) To report facts without prejudice and in their proper context and to make comments without malicious intent… .”

28 U. N. Doc MC/1, June 10, 1948.

29 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/27; United Nations Bulletin, April 15, 1948, p. 339.

30 Par. 4, Resolution No. 36, Report of U. S. Delegates, p. 37.

31 Whitton, loo. cit., Chapter III.

32 See, for example, the French Law on Freedom of the Press of July 29, 1881, especially Art. 13 as modified by Law of Sept. 29, 1919; German Press Law of May 7, 1874, Sec 11; Czech Law of July 10, 1933; Norwegian Criminal Code, Sec. 430. Poittevin, Gustave Le, Traité de la Presse (3 vols., Paris, 1902–1904), Vol. I, No. 188 Google Scholar ff.; Exhenry, Albert , Le Droit de Réponse en matière de Presse dans les Législations d’Europe (Thesis, Lausanne, 1929)Google Scholar.

33 Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 9–10.

34 U. N. Doe. E/Conf .6/C.1/SR/25, p. 6.

35 U. N. Doc. E/856/Add.1.

36 U. N. Doe. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/26; Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 9, 43.

37 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6./C.1/SR/26.

38 Ibid.

39 Second Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, Report of IT. 8. Delegation (Department of State Publication 3062, International Organization and Conference Series IV, UNESCO 1), pp. 44, 45.

40 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.2/SR/10.

41 U. N. Docs. E/856.

42 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/C.4/SR 4.

43 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.3/SR.9. Similarly, during the discussion of the text with respect to monopolies, the British had no difficulty in showing the lack of logic in the Soviet attitude, which held that the condemnation of government monopolies would constitute an interference in the internal affairs of states, but sought nevertheless to prohibit private monopolies. U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/13.

44 Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 4–5. Walter M. Kotschnig, an United States adviser, affirmed that “a free press itself offered the correctives for any abuses which might exist.” U. N. Doe. E/Conf.6/C.4/SR/13. The Swiss view was similar: “Experience had proved that the sense of responsibility, the civic education of free peoples, constituted the best guarantee against abuse.” U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.1/SR/4. The United States and its friends succeeded in turning several projects for out-and-out legal obligations into mere moral duties. Thus, the Bulgarian resolution against hatred propaganda directed against a raee or a nation recommended that states without legislation for this purpose should elaborate and apply laws forbidding all such propaganda. U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.3/3. The contrast between this project and the final text of Resolution No. 4, on Racial and National Hatred, is striking. Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 27–28.

45 Report of U. 8. Delegates, p. 22.

46 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/C.4/7.

47 U. N. Doe. E/Conf .6/C.4/SR/18.

48 U. N. Doc. E/Conf .6/C.4/SR/19.

49 Report of U. S. Delegates, Appendix 3, p. 44.

50 U. N. Doc. E/Conf.6/C.4/SR/13.

51 Schenck v. U. S. (1919), 249 U. 8. 47, 52. And see the following from Hackworth, Digest of International Law, Vol. II, p. 140: “In the United States freedom of speech and of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution, amendment 1 of which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ This does not mean, however, that people in the United States are free to speak or write as they may choose. Remedies are afforded aggrieved persons through laws that have been enacted pertaining to expressions of a slanderous or libelous character.”

52 Edwin D. Dickinson, “The Defamation of Foreign Governments,” this Journal, Vol. 22 (October, 1928), pp. 840–843. In Britain persons responsible for attacks on foreign states have been convicted under laws for criminal libel on the ground that such libels were calculated to create a hostile feeling in foreign states, and cause a breach of peace between the countries concerned. King v. Vint, 27 State Trials 627; King v. Peltier, 28 ibid. 529.

53 Missouri v. Holland (1920), 252 U. S. 416, 433. See also. J. Trieber, in U. S. v. Thompson, 258 Fed. 257, 263: “To subject the treaty power to all the limitations of Congress in enacting the laws for the regulations of internal affairs would in effect prevent the exercise of many of the most important governmental functions of this nation, in its intercourse and relations with foreign nations, and for the protection of our citizens in foreign countries.” See also Charles E. Hughes, Proceedings, American Society of International Law, 1929, pp. 194–196; Charles C. Hyde, International Law (rev. ed., New York, 1944), Vol. II, p. 1387 ff.

54 Supra, note 44.

55 William, E. Hocking, Freedom of the Press in America [Inaugural Address delivered on entrance into office as guest professor at the University of Leyden, 1947 (Leyden, .1947)], p. 13 Google Scholar ff.

56 Whitton, op. cit., passim.

57 Hocking, op. cit., p. 30.

58 Convention II, Art. 5; Convention III , Art. 9; Report of U. S. Delegates, pp. 20, 23.