NEWS CENSORSHIP

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 March 1946, Page 3

NEWS CENSORSHIP

DISTURBING TREND IN NEW ZEALAND FREE PRESSJSSENTIAL (P.A.) ■ NELSON, March 1. “Governments impose censorships, but it is the newspapers which bear their brunt and I’eel their consequences, after they are removed,” said the chairman of the New Zealand Press Association, Sir Cecil Leys, in addressing the association’s annual -meeting. “In this connection it is right to acknowledge appreciatively the fact that through the action of the Prime Minister, censorship in New Zealand was removed very soon after its only real justification—that of war necessity—no longer existed. 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 source. Net Confined to Government.

“There is in this country to-day a hang-over of that state of mind generated by conditions of wartime censorship, which conceives of newsas 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 journalise. The public interest is superior to the interest of public officials, and sometimes is opposed to it. Our newspapers should more clearly recognise that fact.” Sir Cecil said there existed something more than this hang-over from war conditions. Here 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 enjoyed in wartime. The precise function of this organisation was not clear, but-in so far as it was intended to centralise and control the issue of official news it must have newspapers’ vigilant attention and unremitting opposition. “War Hangover.”

The general tendency to which he drew attention, said Sir Cecil, 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 was entitled. Similarly too much of the business of some local bodies was done in committee, and the chairmen of some assumed the right to say to the Press what should not be published.

“These matters,” said Sir Cecil, “are fundamental, for they affect the fullness and promptness of reporting of news. The strength and responsibility of a free press is an essential safeguard of democracy. It is essential to a strong, free press that newspapers should carry out their duty to give the public all the information it is entitled to have, without regard to sectional interests, great or small, that would suppress it, colour it, or tone it down.”