CENSORSHIP ENDED

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25300, 6 September 1945, Page 5

CENSORSHIP ENDED

PRESS IN BRITAIN GREAT WORK IN WARTIME (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) LONDON, Sept. 4, The press, censorship ended in Great Britain exactly six years after it began, and today the Press Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information is deserted. Throughout the war hundreds of censors dealt with 665,560 submissions, involving 183,000,000 words. The censorship of press despatches from Field-Marshal 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 of news from Germany. Rear-Admiral G. P. Thomson, Chief Censor at the Ministry > ■who will remain there for the time being, praised the work of the censors in preserving the secrets of the services essential to the success of the war. Yet, he said, the good relationship between the censftrs and the press had never been destroyed. A paragraph coinciding with the removal of the censorship was a warning I by Mr Harold Floulkes. in his presidential address to the Institute of Journalists, that politicians hi the future might try to keep information from the press. Mr Ffoulkes said: "The passion for secrecy, for the cloaking of affairs affecting the common weal, is not wholly a legacy of the war. Anybody whose calling has brought him intimately into touch with the diplomatic world must have noted that even in the democracies there were in soma quarters indications approving the desirability for some form of control of the press and broadcasting." Mr Ffoulkes added that it was an unhappy but inescapable fact that the difficulties of access to fact and the disclosure and distribution to the world of information which affected the future of millions of people 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 enioy the utmost liberty in the dissemination of news. Honesty in news had never stood at a higher premium, and in respect the newspapers of "Britain and the nnV had not failed. WAR CRIMINALS' TRIAL (Herd. 0.10 p.m.) LONDON. Sept 5 The Russian-controlled Berlin radio savs the opening of the Nuremberg tna of war criminals has been put off until the end of October or the beginning of November fey How the accused to pre-