At War44-11-2173Barriers Down

Words at War. It is my deep conviction that unless we guarantee freedom of the press throughout the world, in the next generation, we will be fighting World War No. 3. That was the voice, those of the words of Kent Cooper, author of the book We Dramatize Tonight.

As the National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books and War Time, more time, presents another of the most widely discussed programs in America. Words at War. Kent Cooper's book, Barriers Down, is the tragic story of Monopoly of World News. You'll hear more from Kent Cooper himself later on in our program. But right now, let me tell

you this. For the more than thirty years he's been with the AP, Mr. Cooper has been known to newsmen and editors as the fightingist American who ever tried to ensure world peace through the freeing of international news.

He knows as well as any living man that one of the first steps on the long road toward war is the deliberate creation of prejudice between countries. His book Barriers Down reveals how international slander is spread.

To begin with, not so long ago, this was the outside world's opinion of the USA. It is my belief, sir, that the people of America aspire only to the shallow dignity of the almighty dollar.

You see, from Peru to China, in Greenland to South Africa, the world's press pictures this nation of ours, it's a sort of gigantic Wild West show, perpetually popping with machine gun fire, echoing with the clambake histrionics of politicians, or soothing its jazz-shattered nerves with copious quantities of bathtub gin and marijuana cigarettes.

Get sore? Sure, you can if you want to. But here's the tragic joker. Not only were they being prejudiced against the USA, but the press was prejudicing them against one another. The English? The arrays of shopkeepers?