FREEDOM OF NEWS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 237, 5 September 1945, Page 5

FREEDOM OF NEWS

END OF CENSORSHIP. DANGERS IN SECRECY. (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Special Correspondent.) (Rec. 9.5 Q a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 4. Press censorship ended in Great Britain exactly six years after it began and today the Press Censor-

ship Department of the Ministry

| of Information is deserted. During the war hundreds of censors dealt with 665,560 submissions involving 183,000,000 words. The censorship of Press despatches from General Montgomery's headquarters is continuing, possibly because no directive has been issued by the War Office. It is suggested that an effort is being made on a high level to retain, at least temporarily, some control over the news from Germany. Admiral G. P. Thomason, chief censor at the Ministry, who will remain there for the time being, paid a tribute to the work of the censors in preserving the secrets of the Services essential to the success of the war. The good relationship between the censors and the Pre'ss had never been destroyed, he said. Coinciding with the removal of the censorship was a warning by Mr Harold Ffoulkes in his presidential address to the Institute of . Journalists that politicians in future might try to keep information from the Press.

Mr tioulkes said: ■ "The passion for secrecy and for cloaking affairs affecting the common weal is not wholly a legacy of the war. Anybody whose calling brought him intimately into touch • with the diplomatic world must have noted that, even in the Democracies, there were in some quarters indications of the desirability for some form of control of the Press and broadcasting." He added that it was an unhappy but inescapable fact that the difficulties of access to the facts and the disclosure and distribution to the world of information which effected the future of millions of iJeople' were still being maintained in many quarters. There was an imperative need for the general adoption of the first of the Four Freedoms, and in that he included broadcasting, which should enjoy the utmost liberty in the dissemination of news. Honesty in news had never stood at a higher premium, and, in that respect, the newspapers of Britain and the 8.8. C. had not failed.

Some amusing memories are retained by a postal censor who examined letters for five years. "Every facet of human nature was revealed to me," he said.

"The work, of course, had its lighter side and there was many a, laugh at the weird construction of sentences. One of my favourites is: 'Jane Jones has had a baby and

her husband has been made a captain and decorated for gallantry.' 'Father is in bed with an abbess on his chest' may amuse you as much as it did me, or, if your humour likes a Rabelaisian touch, the following is a gem: 'Mother was ultra-violated twice in hospital last week. The doctor was such a nice young man'."