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Show Prevailing Opinions I Comment ol the American Press ' proposals contemplate acts forbidding for-bidding payment of ransom for the return of kidnap victims. Laws that made ransom payment pay-ment a criminal act would aid the purpose of the kidnaper, which is to collect a high price for the return of the child and avoid the consequences of the law. The new legislation would principally put the parents in a similar position. They would try to recover the child at any price and at the same time avoid the law'a consequences. The event Itself and ail the negotiations nego-tiations would be kept from the eye of the public and the eye of law enforcement agencies. A form of crime "suppression" which gratifies and reassures the public only because it thrusts crime out of public view would be extended to kidnaping. Portland Ore-gonian. Ore-gonian. Jailed Editors Topping everything else In the minds of the delegates to the Pan-American Pan-American press conference in Valparaiso Val-paraiso was the question of press freedom. In the Latin American countries there are now about 50 newspaper men imprisoned for comments on government The delegates to the conference were right in thinking that until they could obtain the release of their Told in Conference What some states have done through their legislatures, toward protecting newspaper reporters against contempt proceedings when they refuse to divulge a source of confidential information. informa-tion. Senator Capper of Kanaas and Representative Curley of New York are trying to have the United Unit-ed States do nationally. Under a bill they sponsor a reporter or editor would have the same privilege privi-lege of confidential communication communica-tion that now applies in the case of a physician or lawyer. There is, of course, a difference In the nature of the communications. communica-tions. In case of the doctor or lawyer, confidences ere presumed to be concerning the person who confides and they are intended to remain secrets. In the matter of information given in confidence to a reporter the disclosures concern con-cern third parties and are intended intend-ed as a basis for publication or, at least for investigation. But they are offered on the theory that such disclosure is a public service ser-vice and there are Instances, too many to even attempt to recite them, where public wrongs have been righted that never would have been exposed had the informants in-formants been obliged to bear the brunt of the attack. Too often the attempts of grand Juries to force disclosure of sources of Information have been not to promote the pubkc welfare but to discourage attempts to promote pro-mote it In such cases reporters have chosen to go to Jail rather than break faith. Since the newspaper news-paper that uses confidential information infor-mation as a basis for publication shoulders responsibility for its accuracy ac-curacy it is good pubkc policy to permit the reporter to keep the faith without having to become a Jail martyr. 8an Francisco Chronicle. Help for Kidnapers Produced by a near-hysteria ever the Mattson kldnap-murder case are ptoposals in congress and in several state legislatures that the law undertake to control and suppress the strongest and deepest instinct In nature the wlU and the wrth to protect one's offspring at all hasarda. These fellow writers the press would be threatened with complete servility and would be lost as an influence. Pan-American relations have . been appreciably Improved recently recent-ly and were thought to have been further bettered by the conference to which President Roosevelt by his friendly visit gave additional worldwide publicity and distinction. distinc-tion. Tha amenities of such a gathering gather-ing require such an assumption, but it is not to be ignored that many of these democracies lack something of the form and a great deal of the spirit They lack the inalienable rights and privileges, which, if denied, destroy democracy. democ-racy. Until a country haa permitted permit-ted the press to be used as an instrument in-strument of free opinion, of opposition, oppo-sition, if required, and of criticism, criti-cism, it is not a free country and it Is not a democracy. Wherever men are Jail for the expression of their opinion on public pub-lic questions the government so proceeding confesses that it is an autocracy and that liberty does not prevail. Chicago Tribune. Housing for Congress Members of congress, disgruntled disgrun-tled over the poor accommodations they get In Washington for very high rents, are thinking about borrowing $6,000,000 from the Reconstruction Re-construction Finance corporation to build an apartment hotel. If the senators and congressmen congress-men wanted to club together and build such a building on a cooperative coop-erative plan, no one could object but making the taxpayers finance it is a bit thick. The nation does provide a residence for the president; presi-dent; but it haa always required the vice president - members of congress, the supreme court cabinet cabi-net officers and lesser officials to provide their own quarters. There seems no good reason for change. And it would be a change; the hotel would no more be self-supporting self-supporting than any other government govern-ment enterprise; the taxpayers would be nicked for the deficits. Pressure oh Washington housing hous-ing is largely the fault of congress anyway, for permitting and paying pay-ing the bills for such a huge and unnecessary bureaucracy. Congressmen Con-gressmen ought to be the last to complain about the situation. Loa Angeles Tunes. |