It was war-long support by this bloc that prepared MacArthur’s dictatorship of the Pacific today. It was their persistent slandering of the Soviet Union throughout the war that prepared the general hysteria of the press immediately the war had ended. The mere fact of their operation as a bloc, would assure their dominance over the press as a whole unless there were an equally powerful counterbloc. But there is as yet no effective counterbloc--this is one of the primary tasks still to be tackled by labor and the people. For the reactionary program of the pro-fascist bloc is but the unrestrained expression of Big Business’ inner drives. It is but the crude utterance of the prejudices hidden by more cultured newspaper owners. It is the open sore that betrays the hidden disease of our unfree-press: complete subservience to the private interests of the biggest monopolies. Part II: News--Arm of Empire _Chapter IV_ THE ROVER NEWSBOYS ABROAD “I want the people of every land to be as fully informed as we are, through a press of varied inclinations toward the philosophies of the day.”--Kent Cooper. What the American press is at home--an arm of the State--it is abroad. The press, and the forces behind it, have formulated an aggressive program for pushing American commodity news into every corner of the earth. The program is put in the form of a demand for adoption of “freedom of the press as we know it” by all nations. The President, the State Department, the Congress have formally adopted the news industry’s program as a basic unit in American foreign policy. The first major action of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was to set up a subcommittee on the “free press,” to consider a resolution along American lines. There was strong pressure to adopt the American view in its entirety. The U.S. has also insisted that many foreign countries accept American correspondents and adopt American news concepts if they want diplomatic recognition. Speaking for the American newspaper industry, Kent Cooper has further proposed that no country should obtain aid of any kind from the U.S. without acceptance of these views. Official backing of Cooper has gone so far that Congress even delayed a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency appropriation in an attempt to impose a “free press” condition for U.N.R.R.A. aid. As a matter of fact, the wedding of press and State has carried the “free press” demand far beyond the limits of news policy, no matter how you define the latter. A privileged status is being demanded for the news industry, as witness Cooper’s suggestion that correspondents be given _diplomatic immunity_! But the matter is far from stopping there.