TAKEN TO TASK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 41, 19 February 1943, Page 5

TAKEN TO TASK

CENSORSHIP SLATED IN AUSTRALIA CAUSTIC CORRESPONDENT (Recd. 10.15 p.m.) London, Feb. 17. -Political interference and the parochial outlook of individual censors makes the working conditions ot overseas correspondents in Australia at times quite impossible," clared the Daily Mail's war correspondent Noel Monks, interviewed by tile World’s Press News after his arrival in London after a year in Australia.

The interview appears under (he heading: “Amazing disclosures o’l Australian censorship.’’ Monks said that in addition to the Australian censorship, overseas correspondents had to contend >vith General MacArthur's equally drastic military censorship. He was finally forced to return to Britain because he was unable to give a true picture of events. Political censorship refused to allow him to mention the word “censorship” in overseas despatches. For that reason it was impossible for correspondents to inform their offices that their messages had been touched. Moreover, correspondents were often not allowed to send service messages to their offices. Even Germany honoured such messages.

“I had at least six service messages, not containing security data, banned. Finally, in despair, T sent a message from Sydney: ‘Dispirited, disheartened. disgusted, disgruntled.' Transmission of this was refused on the grounds that it might convey to my office that I was unhappy in' Australia.”

Constructive criticism of the Australian political regime was banned time after time. Even editorial comment from newspapers and extracts from speeches in the House of Representatives were prohibited. “Even if we got through these pitfalls we still had to contend with General MacArthur's almost fantastic censorship, which was the worst I have ever experienced in any war I have reported."

Australian censors, he said, moreover employed intimidation methods particularly against British correspondents.

“One censor threatened to refuse me permission to return to England (Monks was born in Australia) because of the fuss I was making about the censorshin. The same censor told the News-Chronicle war correspondent, Dickson Brown, that he was a fifth columnist and threatened him with imprisonment. I reported both cases to Mr. Evatt, who took disciplinary action.

The Army’s gigantic Public Relations Section showed marked lack of co-operation to overseas correspondents. These people, because of their newspaper experience, should have known better. War correspondents do not rank with this Public Relations outfit. They are regarded as a nuisance.”

When he received his "blessed release,” he asked the head of this organisation for the first favour he ever asked in Australia, namely, priority on a plane from Melbourne to Brisbane in order to catch a plane for America. The director refused to pass on the request to the military authorities, but General Winter immediately obtained him a seat in the plane in which General Winter himself was travelling. Mouk says most important newspaper executives championed the cause of overseas correspondents, who were unable to give the outside world a proper picture of events in Australia. Yet correspondents were unable to send out important resolutions by the newspaper proprietors protesting against political rulings affecting censorship. Monk was also unable to send out a message reporting "an extraordinary demand from the floor of the House at Canberra that so important and influential a patriot as Sir Keith Murdoch should be interned because he was campaigning for the correction of muddles in censorship and political interference with the primary direction of the war.”

Monk concluded that the Australian censorship was the worst he had experienced within eight years of reporting in Abyssinia, Spain, France, the Battle of Britain, the United States and the Middle East. Even the Abyssinians had a better idea of censorship than the Australians. He was convinced that the British censorship, despite complaints against it. was the world’s fairest and most intelligent.