No Truce to Criticism

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 1, 17 January 1944, Page 7

No Truce to Criticism

During the war the newspapers have been confronted by an array of special machinery set up to guide and instruct the public. The press has been used by the Ministry of Information and by the press officers and public relations departments of the various Ministries to explain the war and its conduct to the people ; and the essential condition has been the unprecedented degree of national unity embodied in Mr. Churchill’s all-party coalition Government. Control of the press, in so far as there has been control, has been one of the means to

an agreed end. But, although there has been a truce to party politics in the peacetime manner, there has been no truce to discussion and criticism. Indeed, the suspension of party politics in Parliament, and, in the form of elections, in the constituencies as well, has provided the press with added opportunities and responsibilities—“ to speak for England.” It is for this reason that every attempt to use the Ministry of Information as a Ministry of Propaganda, or to use particular press officers as the advocates of particular Ministers, has been jealously, and on the whole successfully, opposed. On a balance of its wartime deeds and misdeeds the press has done well; more harm has almost certainly been done to the war effort when newspapers have been too uncritical than when they have been too critical.