one swell thing about the united states is that newspapers can print whatever stories they want. another one is that nobody has to read them. ... anyway, whatever the constitution says about the press, we americans should be darned glad it says it. in the soviet union, the press is controlled by the official news agency, tass, which is always giving out highly amusing versions of world events: moscow–tass, the official soviet news agency, announced today that soviet troops have entered poland, czechoslovakia, hungary, iran, albania, mongolia, egypt, norway, and saskatchewan at the request of liberation movements fighting the western capitalist colonialist zionist hegemony of running-dog pipe-carrying widow-stabbing baby-eating lackeys of united states imperialism. tass said the soviet forces will ride around in nuclear-powered tanks until the various countries are safe from the threat of further oppression. i imagine the russian people regard tass as a major chuckle. i bet they can’t wait to see the paper each day, so they can read what isn’t going on in the rest of the world. in fact, this is the big advantage their system has over ours: since the russian government always lies, the people can safely assume that the opposite of whatever tass says is true. over here, things are more complicated. our government lies a lot, too, but it can’t force the newspapers to print the lies accurately. from time to time the reporters try to get at the truth, and once in a great while they succeed. so you can be fairly sure you’re reading lies, but, unlike the russians, you can never really count on it.
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