PRESS IN BRITAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23886, 14 August 1939, Page 15

PRESS IN BRITAIN

GOVERNMENT AND NEWS NO NATIONAL BULLETINS MANCHESTER GUARDIAN'S COMMENT That must have been a singularly trustful and optimistic supporter of the Government who inquired in the House of Commons whether, in order to counteract "the monopoly control exercised by certain persons over the press," there was any chance of the Government itself issuing "a weekly news sheet" that would give authoritative information on current '♦vents, says the Manchester Guardian. One obvious difficulty with the present * Government is to get any news out of it at all on quite a number, of subjects in which the public is closely interested. Mr Chamberlain is apt to be stickiness itself under interrogation in, the House; except when he is expanding to a gathering of Conservative women, and thanking them for contributions to his "fan mail" of personal appreciation, he has evolved an increasingly wonderful technique of stonewalling against any attempts to extract information, a technique that was demonstrated again recently when, questions were asked about the Euxton plans case. And even when he does make a considered statement, in recent days it has to be gone over with what Sam Weller would have called " a pair of patent double million magnifyin' gas miscroscopes of hextra power" in order to find out what it means. If the Government began to run any official news bulletin, on the same lines it would be about as helpful as a thick fog. . • - Kindness for Fourth Estate'.',',.,.,

So it is not surprising that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who can also wield a bonny bat in the matter of stone-walling, explained that the Prime Minister wafe hot favourably impressed by the proposal for a. national news bulletin. So one would assume, If this Governmnet has an-' news its natural inclination is to sit on it: if It should by any chance know where it is going (or being pushed) it would much rather not say so. But the occasion did produce a pleasant-little compliment from Sir John Simon, who observed truly that there was a good deal to be said for a free, press and also that " the standard of accuracy, with which the news was presented in re-, sponsible sections of ths press,was happily, high," at which glad tidings blushing practitioners on the Inky Way can only bow to the best of their uncouth tradition and promise to look out for a chance tq return the compliment. For theirs is not the only profession in which mares have been known to rise reluctantly from their would-be cloistered nests. The excellent relations now: established by the King and Queen with newspaper men reporting the tour for journals on both sides of the Atlantic may make a new page in press historv*. for' there has not always in the past been such good feeling in those charters.

Views of Past Kings Relations between George IV as Regent and King and the " gentlemen of the press" were anything'but friendly, though,the press had every reason to exercise some freedom of criticism in that case. Queen Victoria was a good . deal incensed by the criticism—often outspoken in a degree rare indeed in these days-of her seclusion, of her fondness for John Brown, and of her ' German" tendencies; and she would have been more than human if she had not resented attacks on her Consort during the Crimean War even to the point of newspaper rumours that ne might be sent to the Tower. , King Edward Vll's first brush with the press is recorded in a letter of his own to Mrs Bruce in which he denounced the enterprise of a local journalist at Sandringham. Nowadays photographs taken at big shoots are common enough, but this' was in 1862. "Fancy, on Saturday last a reporter from Lynn actually joined the beaters while we were shooting, but as I very i.early shot him in the legs as a rabbit was passing he very soon gave me a wide berth. General Knollys then informed him that his presence was not teouired and he 'skedaddled' as the Yankees call it. The nexf day he wrote an apology for his infamous conduct, and I don't think he will trouble us any more." Shooting parties and all other gathertrgs of "society" people have been taught to think very differently of press Photographers since then—oj where would the "snob weeklies" of the illustrated sort turn to-day for their pictures?