PRESS CENSORSHIP.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18618, 14 July 1930, Page 12

PRESS CENSORSHIP.

METHODS OF JAPAN. The attempts of Japanese officialdom to interfere with the freedom of the Press would be serious from a modern point of view if they did not lead to such diverting counter-attempts at evasion (writes Dr. J. Ingram Bryan in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). That evasion is almost entirely successful leaves the authorities in a quandary, and the public immensely entertained, since the censorship of ; news and articles creates a universal j demand for the publication thus af--1 fected. All newspapers have to de- ; posit with the Government a considerable sum of money, without inter - ' est, as a guarantee of obedience to the . Press regulations; and fines are de- ! ducted from this, as occasion arises, ! until the amount is exhausted, when |it has to be renewed. The police are ; accused of dealing somewhat cavalier - j ly with the money placed thus at their ; mercy; for, all they have to do, when i they consider their regulations violated by a newspaper, is to summon the j editor and notify him of his offence | and the amount of his fine. He may i protest, and even appeal to a court of law, if he likes to take chances, I but this he seldom does, as the exj penses would probably exceed the , amount recovered, to say nothing of ! the worry and trouble involved, j The present writer knows of a case where an editor was summoned for 1 mentioning something about Lolshej vism when the very word was an • offence in any Japanese newspaper, j He was told the amount of his fine, and warned not to repeat the offence. On inquiring the nature of his offence I he was informed that the .word ob- | jected to had appeared in a certain of his paper. He protested that the reference was merely a brief quotation from a certain American newspaper, and betrayed no approval of the dangerous doctrine; but the only reply he got was that the telegram printed in the American paper had been refused admission to Japan, the editor had no right to import or receive the paper containing it, and that, in any case, he had no reason to complain, as the edition of his paper had been nearly all sold out before it was banned and confiscated, so that he had probably recouped the amount of the fine.

In the old days an editor evaded responsibility and even penalty for violating the Press laws, by keeping on hand at the office a “dummy editor,” whose duty it was to answer all summonses to the police court, and if necessary, /o to prison, leaving the real editor free to carry on. Without this device some newspapers would have been left without editorial supervision, and contributions a great part of the time. To-day, this plan does not work satisfactorily, and the real editor is compelled to face the music. How does he manage to obey the regulations and still get his facts and ideas before the public? Well, if an editorial, an article, or a piece of news happens to trespass on the Press regulations of the moment (for the police are constantly shutting down the lifting the lid on special news!, the manuscript has to be sumitted to the police censor, who blue-pencils all words, phrases, and sentences considered improper. If there is anything left of the original, the editor prints it with such devices as triangles, ciphers, dots and other cryptic signs to indicate the matter deleted. This at once gives it a display significance that commands universal attention, and consequently much Increases its circulation. By the editor’s using triangles for one set of ideas or subjects, ciphers for another set and dots for another and so on, the public becomes accustomed to the meaning of such deletions and can read the contribution with greater attention than would be otherwise invited.

When a crime is committed or some notorious or distinguished person is to be arrested, all reference to it may be forbidden to the Press. Sometimes the public is thus unaware of a crime or a police examination for weeks, until the ban is lifted. To the police the most dangerous of dangerous thought is that in reference to Communism, all allusion to which, in the Press, is under the most meticulous supervision of the police censor. During the past twelve months there has been a remarkable resurgence of Communistic propaganda and discussion, especially among young men, mainly undergraduates. Possibly a great deal of it means no more than the bravado of youth refusing to be mentally controlled by officialdom; but such behaviour is none the less an offence against the police regulations and consequently more than a thousand arrests have taken place, with long detention under police examination before being brought to trial, thus ruining the future careers of these clever young men. But Japan is determined to stamp out all traces of Communistic thought and propaganda; and if any suffer from this policy the official attitude is that they do so deliberately with open eyes. If they thus make their own choice they must be prepared to take the consequences. Now, it is almost impossible to prevent free discussion of this in the Press, unless indeed the newspaper were to be wholly abolished. And the constant discussion, together with the sympathy created for misguided or reckless youth really does more to propagate the evil attacked than would be the result were such matters treated as they are in England and the United States.