Abstract
The release of Associated Press correspondent William Oatis from a Czech prison was the most spectacular journalistic event of April, May and June 1953. The settlement of this two-year-old newspaper issue between the western world and the Communist bloc of nations coincided with the so-called “Peace Offensive” in general events of the world.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune unit advertising rate case, another cause celebre of the journalistic world, also was settled during the quarter. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspaper but without clearly indicating whether the general practice of unit rate setting would stand in the eyes of the judges for other press units.
The shelving of all major efforts to investigate the “one-party press” charges of the 1952 election was announced by several professional bodies, mostly on the grounds that no adequate criteria existed for judging the performance of newspapers in the campaign. Fast superseding the “one-party” controversy in the area of newspapers and politics was the James Wechsler-Joseph McCarthy clash. At the end of the period it was under review by a committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors to determine whether press freedom was involved in the senator's official grilling of the New York Post editor in a Senate sub-committee.
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