Arnow Reports Overseas Communities Assume Larger Share of Responsibility for JTA

Increased participation by overseas Jewish communities in the financing and maintenance of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was reported by Robert H. Arnow, JTA President, in a report to the JTA Executive Committee made public today. He said that the results achieved were in line with a Board directive to widen the base of support for the worldwide news agency and to ensure that communities deriving special benefit from the agency’s operations should bear their fair share of the costs involved.

In pursuance of this objective, Mr. Arnow said, Jack Siegel, JTA’s Director of Development, was sent on a special mission to England, France and South Africa to explain the situation to the Jewish leadership in each country and to secure their participation. In England, Mr. Arnow said, agreement was reached for a substantial increase in allocations to JTA and plans concerted to make the JTA British operation self-supporting.

In Israel, he said, agreement was reached on increased service fees which will reduce the deficit previously incurred in the JTA services to Israel. In South Africa, the community confirmed a previous agreement in principle to defray the costs of delivering the news to Johannesburg and a share of the basic news-gathering cost. Community leaders and officials directly assisted JTA in successful negotiations with the South African Treasury for the transfer licenses. The South African service, as from Jan. 1, 1967, must now be considered self-supporting, Mr. Arnow said.

In France, he disclosed, possibility of extensive use of JTA services to meet the informational needs of a community which has doubled in size since 1945 and is now the largest in Western Europe, was extensively canvassed and mutual studies begun. JTA maintained an office in Paris and published a French-language bulletin for more than 20 years prior to the Nazi occupation of the city in 1941, Mr. Arnow noted.

The campaign to enlist the participation of foreign communities will be continued in South America which JTA serves with a daily radio printer circuit from New York. Mr. Arnow said that Mr. Siegel would leave in March for Argentina and Brazil, the two major centers of Jewish population on the continent. JTA publishes daily news bulletins in both countries as well as in Peru.