CENSORSHIP AND THE PEOPLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 237, 7 October 1942, Page 2

CENSORSHIP AND THE PEOPLE

/CENSORSHIP of news in wartime is necessary to the safety of our forces. It is essential that, news which is of value to the enemy should be withheld, and no loyal subject would wilfully or willingly transmit to others facts which might imperil the safety of our forces or of the home front. But a censorship which uses "security" as a pretext to keep the people in ignorance of facts which have no relation to security, the facts concerning their own efforts and their results, leads to a lack of appreciation both of our own difficulties and the measures which are being taken to overcome them. Such a policy, when it Is allied to a series of secret sessions and a failure of the authorities U> stimulate the people to greater effort by letting them know both the dangers and what measures are being taken to combat them—as the Australian Government has ctone, for instance—forms a wrong habit of mind in the people. It gives a fictitious importance to local happenings, and thus encourages so false a sense of values that, in the face of a crisis which may develop into an invasion of our shores, coal-miners could be induced to endanger the whole nation's war effort on a pitifullv feeble issue, in support of a principle which had never even been challenged. A proper education of the people, through facts and still more facts, would have so awakened the mass of the miners to the dangers of weakening the war effort that no agitator could have induced any section to sabotage that effort. It is against this use of the censorship which the newspapers, suffering with the rest of the community from prohibitions and imposed silences, have made the protest which appears in their columns to-day. It is the duty of the public carefully to consider the nature of that protest, to review mentally what they really know of our war effort, to judge how much more they ought to know, and then to remember that only a people worthy of freedom can hope to retain it. Other parts of the Empire have felt the testrictive efforts of the military, naval and air force authorities, most or whom have no inkling of the value of a united home front but in no other British country is so strong a measure of silence imposed to the detriment of a true understanding of the issues. Many instances could be quoted; two will suffice. While no newspaper could refer to the presence here of certain visitors, both Mr. Fraser and Mr Nash broadcast direct references to them and the 8.8.C. gave out the whole story on a dozen wave-lengths. The Japanese also have broadcast it But it is still very secret in New Zealand. Again, no information is given of the size of New Zealand's forces or of the casualties suffered yet Mr Nash, in a broadcast from Washington, gave both the numbers' enlisted and the number of casualties, and no harm was done to anybody by the information. But New Zealanders must not know it. Britishers Canadians, South Africans and Australians can all be entrusted with their own figures, but to give our own people an indication of what they are doing to help the war effort would be "informatidn to the enemy." It is time for the policy and administration which result in such absurdities to be thoroughly overhauled.