HONESTY IN NEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25941, 6 September 1945, Page 5

HONESTY IN NEWS

NEVER AT HIGHER LEVEL BRITISH PRESS AND RADIO (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) * LONDON, Sept. 4. The press censorship ended in Great Britain exactly six years after it began, and to-day the Press Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information is deserted. During the war hundreds of censors dealt 'with 665,560 submissions, involving 183,000,000 words. Censorship of press despatches from Field-marshal Montgomery’s headquarters is being continued, possibly because no directive was 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. Admiral G. P. Thomson, 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 services essential to the success of the war. Yet the good relationship between the censors and the press was never 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 Ffoulkes said: “The passion for secrcey and for cloaking 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 some quarters approving 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 difficulties of access to facts and 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 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.