On October 10, 1968, The Tribune’s front page stories appeared with several paragraphs missing and its editorial page was blank except for one editorial which listed a government agency’s suggestions concerning fires in homes.
Sections of page one stories dealing with an Apollo space flight, the Vietnam w ar, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey were lifted, leaving large white holes in the accounts. Except for the one editorial, the editorial page was blank, carrying only the headlines of columnists and items normally appearing on the page.
In a front page editorial The Tribune stated, “So that we at The Tribune and Tribune readers everywhere might gain a better appreciation of the value of freedom of the press, today’s front page and editorial page have been censored according to standards practiced in many repressed nations of the world.”
The editorial also said, “As you read the news accounts on The Tribune front page, you will, of course, note how incomplete they are in terms of what Americans are provided in the way of information in a free society. The Tribune will not reprint any of these stories in full. What is lost in this ‘censored’ edition is lost forever. We, the American people, can live with the loss of news for a day. But could this nation survive in freedom if we had to live with censorship every day?”
[This message could not be more loudly needed than today. Too many of the major news media — print and electronic — have become political tools with objective, unbiased reporting becoming more and more difficult to find.]