NO SYDNEY MORNING NEWSPAPERS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 13430, 18 April 1944, Page 5

NO SYDNEY MORNING NEWSPAPERS

DISTRIBUTION IS PREVENTED Trouble Over Censorship Legal Action Said To Be Pending Sydney, April 17. Neither the Sydney Morning Herald nor the Sydney Daily Telegraph were on sale this morning. Distribution of the papers was prevented by Commonwealth officers following the publication of material which they had been ordered by the Commonwealth publicity censorship not to publish. The action followed the prevention of distribution of the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. This suppression .came as the result of the refusal of the Sunday Telegraph to comply with a censorship instruction ordering the editor to fill in certain blank spaces from which matter had been deleted by the censor, and was the culmination of differences between the Minister for Information, Mr Calwell. who controls the censorship, a»nd the chairman of the Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, Mr R. A. Henderson. Last Wednesday, Mr Calwell defended the Information Department against earlier newspaper criticism which followed misunderstandings created in the United States by the Ministerial announcement of the pending reduction in the strength of the Australian Army. The initial censorship action concerned the reply made to the Minister by Mr Henderson on behalf of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, It is understood that suppression of to-day’s Sydney morning newspapers followed their failure to comply with the order not to publish material arising out of the same matter. Legal action is believed to be pending.