FACING A CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27504, 26 September 1950, Page 5

FACING A CRISIS

Britain’s Newspaper Industry

GOVERNMENT’S MISHANDLING OF NEWSPRINT

LONDON, Sept. 24. Mr John Gordon, editor of the Sunday Express, today attacked .the British Government’s decision to export newsprint to Australia and New Zealand while home papers were “ virtually living from hand to mouth.” Britain had never been faced with a more serious, threatening, and critical situation, he told the annual conference of the Institute of Journalists.

“ Our worst fears have been realised, with the result that at present stocks of newsprint for the whole of the British Isles have fallen to tjelow 70,000 tons, or less than seven weeks’ supply,” he said. He charged that the breaking of Canadian newsprint contracts on Government insistence had resulted in Scandinavian pulo and paper-makers having a monopoly which would cost Britain millions and would eventually threaten the very existence of British papers. Mr Gordon added: “ While hundreds of millions of pounds have been set aside for preparing the country against the possibility of war and stocks of necessary commodities have been built up. nothing has been done to safeguard the publication of newspapers. If, in the next month or two, Scandinavian supplies of paper were cut off, as they were in 1940. we have no reason to hope we would get any paper whatsoever from Canada or Newfoundland.” He said that the prices demanded by Scandinavian makers would put many papers in “ queer street.” Under these prices the steps taken by the Government to save 5,000,000 Canadian dollars would have cost British papers more than £50.000,000 in one year. “That affects the livelihood of every journalist in this country, and it wrecks the free expression of opinion and the free reporting of news in this country. Bad management has brought about a situation never known before in the newspaper industry.” Mr Gordon said.