China News Ban

Since his decision last August banning U.S. newsmen from entering Communist China, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has traveled through and around at least three different reasons why he thinks the ban is necessary and justified. Last week the State Department chafed the American press by reviving, as its justification, Dulles' explanation that the sending of newsmen into Red China would amount to paying blackmail for the release of eight U.S. prisoners there. "We will not let newsmen go while [the Red Chinese] are holding our citizens illegally," Deputy Under Secretary Robert Murphy told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Minnesota's Democrat Hubert Humphrey pursued the point: If the question of American prisoners were not involved, would the department favor newsmen traveling to China? Murphy's reply: "I believe, on balance, the answer would be yes."

Murphy also stood on another explanation offered by State in the past--there can be no intercourse because "a state of unresolved conflict exists between the United States and Communist China," and travelers cannot be allowed to go there because the U.S. is not in a position to protect citizens who travel to Red China.

Thus the stalemate prevailed. The press, hesitant to defy its government even when generally convinced that the Government erred, was frustrated in its desire to see and report about one of the world's largest countries and its country's No. 2 antagonist in the cold war. Secretary Dulles was left in the untenable position of using the U.S. press as a weapon in his diplomatic warfare.

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