New Curbs for the Yugoslav Press
LEVI, JAKOV
New Curbs for the Yugoslav Press Tito cracks down on skeptical newsmen By Jakov Levi The appointment of new "Publishing Councils" is the latest effort by Yugoslav Communist leaders to curb the...
...What with tighter Party controls and a basic Government indecision on future relations with Moscow, the newspapermen have a tough road to hoe...
...At the same time, he was aware that the very Communists who had been his most ardent supporters in the fight with Stalin were now manifesting their deep disillusionment with Communism in general...
...At a time when the Party organ Borba was branding the Poznan strike as "counter-revolution," the other Belgrade daily, Politika, was publishing fairly accurate reports on the plight of the Polish workers...
...aid and for letting heretics run loose, Tito found it easier to quarantine Djilas and cancel his own Washington trip than to give up American Jakov Levi resigned three months ago as U.S...
...the other showed the same soldiers extending roses to Rajk's coffin...
...To be sure, ever since Tito took power there have been editors and junior editors on every newspaper, magazine and radio station who have enjoyed the confidence of the Communist leadership...
...Until Tito's speech at Pula on December 11 set a definitive line, the Yugoslav newspapers carried fairly accurate accounts of the events in Budapest...
...This is not the first time Tito has cracked down on editors...
...It represents a blunt decision to substitute direct Government control for the previous reliance on the "political consciousness of the toilers of the press...
...This could never have happened on Borba, however, which is firmly controlled by the Party's agit-prop division...
...The prospects are not bright for non-conformists in the press...
...Yet the events of 1956 showed that even these curbs could not hold the press in check...
...New Curbs for the Yugoslav Press Tito cracks down on skeptical newsmen By Jakov Levi The appointment of new "Publishing Councils" is the latest effort by Yugoslav Communist leaders to curb the press...
...To be sure, none of the editors fired or disciplined in recent years have gone to prison for their heresies...
...The imprisonment of Milovan Djilas was, in part, a warning to the press and the intellectuals generally...
...correspondent for Borba...
...Criticized by Moscow for accepting U.S...
...Some years ago, for example, one Politika editor was fired and another severely reprimanded for an uncritical attitude toward the West...
...and there were Party cells on each staff...
...Borba, by the way, continued to denounce Poznan even after Gomulka and other Polish Communists had given it due praise...
...economic assistance...
...Last October, for example, Politika printed a cartoon by Dzumhur commenting on the posthumous rehabilitation of purged Hungarian Communist Laszlo Rajk...
...When the Hungarian revolt broke out, the Yugoslav newspapers—in one official's words —-"went wild...
...Nevertheless, the cartoonist's direct superiors gave him a bonus of 25,000 dinars...
...That morning, the director of the paper got an angry phone-call from First Vice President Edvard Kardelj...
...But in cases of that type the targets were suspected of bourgeois leanings, while now Tito is worried about old Communists whose faith is faltering...
...The cartoon had two panels: One showed a firing squad executing him...
...But, then again, this was before Tito saw fit to jail his former Vice President...
...there were special directors to guide editorial policies...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 10
