FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24897, 10 June 1946, Page 5

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

FUNCTION WITHIN DEMOCRACY

DISCUSSION BY EMPIRE CONFERENCE

LONDON, June 7. Speaker after speaker at the Empire Press Conference reaffirmed the free-' dom of the press as one of the highest essentials for the preservation of democracy and civilisation. Mr Francis Williams, formerly editor of the “Daily Herald,” who was Controller of Press and Censorship during the war and who now is public relations adviser to Mr Attlee, told the conference that journalists should be more explicit about the freedom of the press, and not merely state the principle. The conference would do an immense service to the world if it restated and redefined in modern terms what the freedom and obligations of the press meant, he said. The essential freedom was naturally freedom from censorship, and the next was freedom from Government control. It was necessary, with the concentration of the government authority over ever-widening fields, to build a bridge between the government and the people. There must be frankness and confidence by government departments in their relations with the newspapers, and willingness to give information, not onty when it was favourable, but on all occasions.

There must also be a readiness to answer questions legitimately concerning the public. It was the "duty of information officers to provide facts, not to try to give out propaganda. Mr Williams said he would like to see freedom to report the world’s news written into the United Nations Charter. Every member of the United Nations should guarantee to allow freedom of information and a flow of news. In the present battle of ideologies, said Mr Williams, he did not. however, believe that that could be achieved quickly. Mr Brendan .Bracken said the freedom of the press was a right not invested in the press but belonging to the public. It was up to the people and the press to keep it carefully and to watch any threat against it. “Specialist Journalists"

Mr Bracken deplored the growth of cliques and specialist journalists instead of journeymen journalists. Specialists. he said, were inclined to defend departments from which they derived confidential information. The press, he added, must resolutely refuse to allow advertisers to influence editorial policy, especially now that governments were such big advertisers.

The chairman (Lord Astor) said that liberty for journalists was not privilege but the fundamental liberty of ♦he subject. The renditions for press freedom were vigilance couoled with responsibility. The press would keen its liberty as lon* as if did not use it tn injure Rs fellow citizens. Sir Keith Murdoch f said a government had a right, even a dutv. to establish machinery to inform the

public ot great issues, but there whs a danger of such an organisation becommg a means of propaganda on behalf of a political party in power. That tendency was developing in Australia. . S‘ r Keith Murdoch placed before the conference a four-point programme. to maintain and extend the freedom of the press, to seek freedom of expression or at least accessibility to news in countries where it was obstructed or refused, to improve the newspapers own authority and fairV? cheapen all channels of communication and to clear them from obstruction and taxation. R.Slnclair (New Zealand) .°L the worrt features of the the press would be having to publish statements without alteration or comment. This would be worae '5 an J > avin? f° submit to a restriction of what might be published. Mr Sinclair warned delegates that the press must be watchful of the libel law and any amendments to it lest anything were framed which robbed them of the privilege of free speech and free criticism.