The editors of Israel’s daily newspapers will meet in an emergency session next Sunday to consider measures to be taken to combat what they consider the government’s latest attack on freedom of the press.
The editors object specifically to the latest order to civil servants not to give newsmen access to any information–secret or non-classified–unless it was intended for publication purposes.
Among the countermeasures to be considered by the editors are: a refusal to publish official government communiques; instructions to reporters to boycott government press officers, and, possibly an appeal to international organizations and world public opinion.
The height of absurdity in relation to the new instructions was reached here today, according to local newspapermen, when a government office refused a list of the names of judges in a public architectural competition for a government building. At the same time, advertisements were taken in the press listing the very names denied reporters.
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