NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 109, 4 November 1939, Page 14

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

be called a "responsibility basis." That is .to say, the correspondent was able to send what'he liked, but he had to answer for it afterwards, and sometimes he was expelled. If the news? be sent away was considered to be damaging to the Reich he would be I regarded for some time with dis- ! favour, he would not be received by officials, and his opportunities of obi taining stories would be lessened. .' If his reports were consistently "injurious" to Germany he would be told to leave. The manner in which the Germans outstripped the British and French in the "news of. action" was so marked in the first few weeks of the war that it was commented upon by Mr. Edwin L. James, managing editor of the "New York Times," in a special article. He declared that London and Paris had "resorted to old-time censorship, with all its errors and bad judgment," but that "Berlin had followed quite' a different policy." Neutral correspondents had received assistance ia Germany, said Mr. James, and the result was that their newspapers had . published relatively more German news than they would "have done had the regular channels been open from London and Paris. Berlin news dispatches were arriving in time for publication; those from the ottoer capU

tals, owing to censorship delaysj were not. An example was the sinking of the Athenia. Though Britain announced this over the radio at once, news dispatches describing it were held.up for from six to ten hours, and arrived in New York too late, for use. The London Bureau of the "New York Times" began filing the story at 4.19 a.m. (11.19 p.m. New York daylight saving time) and continued filing it ia short messages for the next three hours. The first "take" reached New York about 6 a.m., and some of the material arrived at noon next day. It was such things which, led to complaints,in the ■ House of Commons' about the Ministry of Information. • • •