JOURNALIST FINED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24951, 25 June 1942, Page 5

JOURNALIST FINED

ARTICLE ON ENEMY ALIENS CASE IN AUSTRALIA (N.Z.P.A. Special Australian Correspondent.) (Rec. 1.45 a.m.) SYDNEY, June 24. For having failed to comply with the request to supply information to the military authorities about his sources of information for a newspaper article on enemy alien activities in North Queensland, Roy Connelly, a former New Zealand journalist, was fined £2O at Brisbane. Connelly was prosecuted under the National Security Regulations. The article concerned alleged that large quantities of concealed arms and ammunition were in the hands of Italians. An army representative said that Connelly had been asked to reveal his source of information because the army wanted to find out if there had been a leakage of secret information from military intelligence. A representative of the Australian Journalists' Association claimed that journalists were doing work of national importance. In doing their work they had sources of information open to them that would not be open unless they respected the confidence reposed in them. The magistrate, Mr G. A. Cameron, rejected the prosecution's request that Connelly should be ordered to enter into a recognisance to comply with the provisions of the Security Regulations in future. Convicting Connelly, the magistrate said it had been disclosed that other articles, in some respects very similar to that upon which the prosecution was based, had appeared in other. publications and were not noticed by the authorities, and that Connelly had been "singled out." None of the articles in other publications attributed possession of any of their information to officers of the intelligence section.