World’s Press Seeks Better Facilities

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31729, 12 July 1968, Page 11

World’s Press Seeks Better Facilities

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) ESTORIL (Portugal), July 11. Representatives of the world’s press today criticised some telecommunications authorities for their failure to move with the times in providing the press with the modern facilities required to keep the public informed.

“The old concepts are simply outmoded—they are much too restrictive when technology is giving us more and more flexibility,” Mr Stanford Smith, the retiring chairman of the International Press Telecommunications Committee, told the annual meeting of that organisation, which represents the world’s principal newsgathering agencies and newspapers. “We demand the right to use that flexibility in ways which will meet the needs of

the press,” Mr Smith said. The meeting, which specifically demanded for the press the right to have direct access to communications satellites, invited joint action with other possible users—for example, television—in bringing about this aim. It also decided to urge communications authorities to discontinue restrictive regulations which hamper the joint use of telecommunications facilities by groups of news organisations.