B.B.C under fire again

Press, 31 May 1982, Page 8

B.B.C under fire again

NZPA London The 8.8. C. replied yesterday to criticism that it has been speculating on the possible movements of British troops on the Falkland Islands and placing them in potential danger by giving away their plans to the enemy. . The attack came in a pooled dispatch from a journalist, Max Hastings, who is with the task force. It was directed at Andrew Walker, a 8.8. C. defence correspondent, who, Hastings said, announced correctly that the Parachute Regiment

was due to hit Goose Green. According to Hastings, intense bitterness was being expressed everywhere on the San Carlos beachhead on Saturday over what he described as “the extraordinary indiscretions by the Ministry of Defence and the 8.8. C. World Service.” He quoted.one man as posing the question: “How many enemies are we supposed to be fighting? If the Paras lose a lot of people, you know who told them what we were going to do.” Hastings reported that there was a widespread feeling that politicians and news-

papers in London show “a reckless disregard for security — speculating endlessly about possible or probable British courses of action, despite the tight censorship of all correspondents' reports.” He said the colonel commanding the positions attacked by Argentine Skyhawks had told him that if a 8.8. C. correspondent arrived in his area, he would be sent immediately to the prisoner-of-war cage. In a statement yesterday, the 8.8. C. replied: “Andrew Walker and the 8.8. C. were

only reporting information that was freely available from official circles and was being widely related by journalists out of London across the world. “Of course the 8.8. C. World Service, in particular at the moment, is acutely aware of the dangers of speculating about what might be going to happen on the Falklands battlefront for the very obvious reasons that Max Hastings mentioned. “And, in fact, our correspondent’s reference to an advance on Darwin and Goose Green by paratroops was not to something that might happen but to something that he was told in London had already taken place and was in fact virtually over.”