Some Like It Cold

In the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin made an important statement on Berlin. It was on Fleet Street's front pages within the hour. But in Switzerland, R.H.S. Crossman, Laborite M.P.-journalist on holiday, had to wait 24 hours to read what Bevin had said. Crossman cursed the incompetence of the Swiss press, which ran long book reviews and leisurely think pieces on its newsless front pages. Then he got to thinking it over, and took the curse back.

"As far as I could discover," he wrote in a recent issue of London's New Statesman and Nation, "I suffered no ill effects from reading [Bevin] after lunch instead of with my breakfast. Sobered by this discovery, I began to reflect on the philosophy of 'news.' News coverage in our popular press is based on the principle that every paper every day must excel all its rivals in not 'missing' the latest news available ... The definitions of 'hot news' and 'news value' are largely an Anglo-Saxon convention . . ."

But in Switzerland, with small-circulation papers and not much big news, said Crossman, "Gresham's law of journalism does not operate. Hot news in Switzerland does not drive out cold information . . . The Swiss press's . . . major purpose is to inform, not to increase circulation ... Thus it has avoided both the French disease of political corruption and the Anglo-Saxon disease of sensationalism."

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