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Show YOUR HBISPAM LIGHTS THE WA Y OF FREEDOM Free Press Spreads Light On Darkness of Ignorance "Your newspaper lights the way of freedom." That is the theme which has been chosen for the 1951 observance of National Newspaper Week. The choice is a line one, for the slogan has far-reaching implications. First of all, it suggests that where there is no light there is darkness. In this case the darkness is ignorance, "a night", someone has said, "without moon or stars." The National Newspaper Week theme presumes the right to pierce that darkness with the light of information and it presumes at the same time the right to keep that light burning in face of all odds. I For free man has a right to know. It there is a right ' to know, there must be a right to tell. j The men who made this nation considered the right to tell so important that they wrote it into the No. 1 Amendment to our Federal Constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech and freedom i of the press." j But the right to tell is more than a privilege, it is a duty. Elijah Lovejoy, abolitionist editor at Alton, 111., believed be-lieved in his right to carry the lamp of the free press and ho knew his duty to light it and keep it burning. Three times mobs destroyed his printing presses. While he was protecting his fourth press, Lovejoy was shot to death. Don Mellett, the Canton, Ohio, publisher, kept the spotlight of publicity focused on the racketeers in his community until they ambushed him and shot him at his own doorstep. Racketeers, international or smalltime, know the power of the press. That is why they must control that power, why they must black out the light of public information infor-mation if they are to attain and maintain a grip on the people. That is why half the population of the world is under sofe form of censorship today. That is why Gen. George C. Marshall, Secretary of Defense, said "Americans should keep constantly in mind that no people have lost their liberties so long as their press remained free." That is why in the interest of world understanding and hence in the interest of peace our nation seeks actively ac-tively to spread throughout the world the freedom of the people to learn the truth. A free press a free people. "Your newspaper lights the way of freedom." The vital truth of that message is the one thing National Na-tional Newspaper Week has to sell. |