The Press: A Member Speaks Up

In the course of its losing fight to exclude Marshall Field's Chicago Sun, the high-&-mighty Associated Press took some stern lecturing at the hands of prosecutors and the courts. Last week it got a dressing-down from one of its own members. To Editor James Kerney Jr. of Trenton's little Evening Times (circ. 54,381), it seemed that A.P. had acted with poor grace when the Supreme Court told it to mend its ways (TIME, Dec. 10).

Said little A.P. Member Kerney, on his editorial page: "The supporters of [the Chicago Tribune's publisher] McCormick now are preparing petitions to Congress to exempt news agencies from the antitrust laws. This is an unfortunate attempt to gain special favor. . . . Congress should turn [it] down. Freedom of the press . . . is not a license to newspapers to run their businesses apart from the rest of America. . . . It should be treated by the press . . . as the sacred trust which it is."