The Press: In Name Only

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It is one thing to shut down and seize a great daily, Argentina's Juan Peron has found, but quite another thing to publish it. Since last May Day, when he gave Buenos Aires' La Prensa to "the workers," the General Confederation of Labor (C.G.T.) has struggled to get another edition of the daily on the stands. Twice C.G.T. has set publication dates, but no papers have come out, in part because the government let printing machinery become clogged with rust and dust.

This week the Peronistas finally published their new La Prensa. It looked, at first glance, like the old, used the same type and makeup, ran the same columns of social news, claimed the same circulation. Gone were the exhaustive reports from abroad which had helped make La Prensa one of the world's great newspapers, and the editorials which had quietly spoken up against Juan Peron.

Bossing the Peronized paper is C.G.T. Boss Jose Espejo (Peron had wanted to make the plant a state publishing house, but ailing Evita Peron held out for a C.G.T.-owned paper and won). Its editor is Martiniano Passo, who edited Evita's own daily, Democrada. He had lured in only one top newsman from the old La Prensa, Luis Maria Alvarez, once an intimate of former Publisher Alberto Gainza Paz, now in voluntary exile.

How La Prensa will fare is anybody's guess. At first, circulation will certainly be ballooned by sales to the Peronista faithful. But atop La Prensa's stately old building, the beacon which once symbolized reason and truth was extinguished.