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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 8, 1966
Example by a coed
Annette Buchanan is only 20, and as editor of the Daily Emerald at the University of Oregon is hardly a professional journalist yet. But already she has faced one of the toughest problems that can face a newsman. She has handled it like a professional, and the American press will be the stronger for it.
Last month, in the wake of reports that the use of drugs is increasing on the American campus, Miss Buchanan interviewed five students who said they either used marijuana or approved of its use by students. The story, a good example of journalistic initiative, shook the town of Eugene, and a grand jury demanded that Miss Buchanan reveal the names of the students involved. Rightly, she refused, and has now been ordered by a circuit judge to produce the names or face a possible six months in jail and a $300 fine.
IT IS A FAMILIAR and pointless argument. Since Miss Buchanan still insists she will not talk, the case will be carried to a higher court where in all probability it will be decided in her
favon. Whatever the court outcome, it is the kind of case that the newsman may lose but which the courts cannot win. Indeed, society stands to win with the newsman. It is a matter not only of press freedom but of common sense.
Judges, police and juries who insist that reporters owe it to society to reveal leading information miss the point; if the newsman starts revealing his sources, he will soon have none, and his service to his society will end. For the newsman is not a policeman. His duty is not to police society but to show it for what it is, so that proper agencies may police it.
Press freedom exists not for the press but for society, which is informed and alerted by aggressive reporting of the news. When it can no longer protect its sources, the press will lose access to these sources, and society as well as the press will be the loser. Officials hounding Annette Buchanan, or the Los Angeles officials who tried to trap Watts rioters from their tape-recorded voices on television programs, should remember this.-Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal
New breeze blows in Bonn
By PHIL NEWSOM
UPI Foreign News Analyst
GPI Foreign News Analyst The new spirit sweeping Europe in search of closer relations between East and West also is evidencing itself strongly in West Germany.
This is not alone in the economic field in which the West Germans long have been in the forefront.
PERHAPS IT IS because the go-it-alone policies of French President Charles de Gaulle forced an examination of the whole concept of NATO.
Perhaps it is because years of frustration have convinced the Germans that if there ever is to be a reunited Germany,it must come at least in part from German initiative.
In any event, it it a far cry from the hard-line policies of former West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, for it takes the position that disagreements are negotiable and that German reunification can be accomplished only at a price.
Nor does it require necessarily that reunification come first.
ONE IMPORANT move came earlier this year when the Bonn government offered to sign nonaggression agreements with all
of the East European Communist governments except East Germany.
Bonn also proposed that observers be exchanged during NATO and Warsaw Pact maneuvers, reiterated its pledge to seek no nuclear weapons of its own, reassured Czechoslovakia that it sought no border alterations and told Poland it was willing to accept sacrifices in the disputed territories beyond the Oder-Neisse.
Only four years ago, a move by the late President Kennedy to explore Soviet offers of a non-agression act brought a roar of rage from Adenauer.
SINCE THEN, two other important proposals have come from a man already high in the councils of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard's government.
Comparatively little known outside West Germany, he is Dr. Rainer Barzel, who currently serves in the dual role of first deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic party and Christian Democratic leader in the German Bundestag parliament.
Both were designed to offer proof of West German intent to remain a peaceful member of the European family.
During a visit to the United States, Barzel suggested that a united Germany could permit some Russian troops to remain on German soil.
THE PROPOSAL created a sensation in West Germany and promptly was downgraded by the Erhard government as a personal opinion.
Nonetheless there was speculation it was a government trial balloon.
This week, in a speech before the German Foreign Policy Association, Barzel declared that French troops should remain in West Germany even after their departure from the NATO command Friday.
HE DECLARED HIS confidence that France would come to West Germany's aid in a crisis and declared the country could not do without either French or American troops.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Barzel, 41, and 28 years Erhard's junior, could become West Germany's chancellor. His words amount to a recognition that reunification will be a slow process and will come only after Germany has proved herself.
POKER CHIPS BONO DRUMS JAZZ RECORDS PORTABLE HI-FI
CARDG, GOLF CLUBS TRANSISTOR! — SAY, ARE WE SENDIN' THIS
KID TO A COLLEGE OR A COUNTRY CLUB?"
Letters...
Dear Sir:
I do not hold a brief for Mr. Bert C. Carlyle of Topeka. In fact, I learned about his existence only when I read his name in the "Reds at KU" leader in the July 1 issue of the Summer Session Kansan. Nevertheless, I cannot but give my full assent to the wider sense in which he construes the term "communist."
Mr. Laird Wilcox's narrow definition of who must be considered a "bona fide communist," i.e., a card-carrying party member, strikes me as being either incredibly naive or disingenuous.
Studies in France
H. A. Stammler Professor of Slavic Langs. & Lits.
Ahmad Sabahi, a fourth-year student of architecture at KU, is in Europe attending this summer's session of the Fontainebleau Fine Arts and Music Schools near Paris.
Sabahi was one of nine regional winners in the fourth annual Architectural Scholarship Awards Program of the Portland Cement Association. Each scholarship included transportation, tuition, board, and lodging up to $1500.
BOOK REVIEWS
CHILDREN AND OTHERS, by James Gould Cozzens (Crest, 75 cents)—Well, this was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, which will endear it to some and make it, for others (Dwight Macdonald, say), beneath contempt. It's a collection, essays and short stories. The style lets in a little more light than is customary with Mr. Cozzens, and this will make the book something that, at least, can be grasped.
*****
CASTLE KEEP, by William Eastlake (Crest, 75 cents)—A war novel, about an old castle in the Ardennes where a detachment of American soldiers holes out on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. It's more endowed with humor (to put it in a literary way) than most war novels. The war novels will never run down, and this one already has been sold to Hollywood.
** ** **
$$
*****
$$
RAVENSCROFT, by Dorothy Eden (Crest, 60 cents)—Another of those Gothic thrillers, in the genre that's riding so high in 1966, especially with the young and romantic. It's a suspense tale, about a damsel in distress in 19th century England, pursued from the London slums to a great manor house. This is what used to be called "summer reading."
SOUTH OF THE ANGELS, by Jessamyn West (Crest, 95 cents)—A new one by the author of "Friendly Persuasion." The setting is the shadow of the Sierra Madres, and it's about pioneering folks in southern California. But not superficial in the sense of much historical fiction. This writer knows how to get into the minds and souls of her characters.
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The Number One Best Seller, by Marvin Kitman (Dial, $3.95). Kitman might be described as a situation humorist. Instead of commenting humorously on the zany activities of others, he specializes in humorous descriptions of the zany things he has done himself.
This first book (subtitled "The True Adventures of Marvin Kitman") is a compilation of material previously published in magazines.
MORE THAN A THIRD of the book is devoted to Kitman's best-known exploit—his tongue-in-cheek campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964 on the "Lincoln ticket." (His platform: Abolish slavery, reinforce the garrison at Fort Sumter, and bring the South back into the union.)
"I wasn't surprised that General Goldwater lost in 1964." he says solemnly. "At a time in history when the voters really wanted a true reactionary, the Republican Party gave them a moderate."
KITMAN ALSO describes his efforts to end one phase of segregation by persuading the League of Women Voters to accept him as a member, and his attempt to settle the Sino-Soviet conflict by inviting Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung to a summit conference in Leonia, N.J.
Summer Session Kansan
For 76 Years, KU's Official Student Newspaper
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