CENSORSHIP OF NEWS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24814, 2 March 1946, Page 2

CENSORSHIP OF NEWS

OFFICIALS’ ATTITUDE CRITICISED PRESS ASSOCIATION’S MEETING (P.A.) NELSON, March 1.

“Governments impose censorships, but it is the newspapers which bear their brunt and feel their consequences after they are removed,” said the chairman of the New Zealand Press Association (Sir Cecil Leys), addressing the association's annual, meeting. It was right to acknowledge that censorship in New Zealand was removed soon after war ended, said Sir Cecil Leys. “That is to say, censorship of news after the newspapers had collected it has been removed, but there is another form of censorship which remains—censorship of news at its sources.

“There is in this country to-day a hangover of that state of mind generated by conditions of war-time censorship, which conceives of news as something which is ‘issued’ or ‘released’ by some official at times and in circumstances that suit himself or his superiors. This conception is inimical to good journalism. The public interest is superior to the interest of public officials, and sometimes is opposed to it. Our newspapers should more clearly recognise this fact.” Government Policy

Sir Cecil Leys said there existed something more than this hangover from war conditions. There was a policy of the Government of the day, which endeavoured to dam the stream of official and administrative news and channel it through a few Ministerial sources in Wellington. The office of the Director of Publicity had been abolished, but there was now an Information Section of the Prime Minister’s Department with, strangely enough, far more generous staffing than the Director of Publicity enjoyed in war time. The precise function of this organisation was not clear; but, i-i so far as it was intended to centralise and control the issue of official news, it must have the newspapers’ vigilant attention and unremitting opposition. The general tendency to which he drew attention was not confined to the Government. Various local body and other officials, having picked up the phrase, “off the record,” sought to use it as a means of denying, or at least delaying. information to which the public were entitled. Similarly, he said, toe much of the business of some local bodies was done in committee, and the chairmen of some assumed the right to say to the newspapers what should not be published. Theca matters were fundamental, for they affected the fullness and promptness of the' reporting of news. The strength, responsibly used, of a free press was an essential safeguard of democracy. It was essential to a strong, free press that the newspapers should carry out their duty to give the public all the information they were entitled to have without regard to sectional interests, great or small, that would suppress it, colour it, or tone it down.