For many years in many nations, men have waged the battle for freedom of expression. In modern days, the means of mass communication--newspapers, magazines, radio, and motion pictures--have arisen as a new and vital factor in that fight. This exceptionally clearly-written Report has contributed one of the most worthwhile and comprehensive analyses ever undertaken of these American information media. It concludes that freedom of the press is in danger not so much from government interference as from the men who direct its activities, that the press has not yet accepted the full measure of its responsibility to the public. Such a thesis, coming not from professional detractors of the American press but from a competent commission headed by Robert Hutchins and financed largely by Time, Inc., should enjoy enough stature to batter down the walls of heretofore skeptical minds on the subject.

As the Report indicates, the modern press is a social phenomenon grown to such proportions in influencing the minds of men that it cannot any longer be considered private property responsible to no one but its owners. Its responsibility nowadays is primarily to the community. Therefore, some control becomes inescapable. "The freedom of the press can remain a right of those who publish only if it incorporates into itself the right of the citizen and the public interest." If it continues to be in so many cases inflammatory, irresponsible, and sensational, an increasing demand will inevitably come forth for a federal control which can mean an end to a cherished freedom.

Since self-regulation is preferable to government regulation, the Report goes on to make five concrete recommendations to the press and five more to the government. Among these it urges a vigorous mutual criticism among the elements of the press and an increase in the effectiveness and independence of its staff (for example, by extending such programs as the Harvard Nieman fellowships). Since monopolistic tendencies involving newsprint, news services, and trade antagonism make increasingly difficult the founding of new newspapers, the government should enter the picture in a limited capacity. Anti-trust laws must be used to ensure real competition. The present libel laws must be made more effective in protecting persons injured by false statements. Going further, the government should employ mass communications media of its own where necessary to inform the people at home and in foreign countries of its policies and purposes.

"A Free and Responsible Press" may be employed very skillfully by those totalitarians who desire neither a free nor a responsible press. Rather than permit these people to use it as a weapon with which to throttle a democratic institution, intelligent leaders of the American press should take to heart the eminently sensible statements of this Report and erase the symptoms of a disease which encourages the malicious work of free-expression suppressers.