Mr. Aneurin Bevan Again Attacks British Press

Chronicle (Levin), 2 November 1949, Page 5

Mr. Aneurin Bevan Again Attacks British Press

Received Tuesday, S.50 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 1. Another attack on the British press has been made by Air. Aneurin Bevan, Speaking in Wales he declared that the Socialist Government inherited a system of daily newspapers which was mucli more concerned with distortion than with tlie dissemination of knowledge. He added: " If this generation fails in its task a great deal of the respousibility will lie at the doors of tlie inodern sensational newspapers. We have three main institutions: Parliament, the Judiciary and the press, and Parliament and the judiciary can only be kept wholesome and healthy with the help of a free press. "It is almost iinpossible to understand what is done in the Commons by what is said in the daily newspapers. I can 't recognise what I myself have said when 1 read it the following mornjng. These newspapers have fallen into the hands of a small number of commereially-minded people who nse them and their power not for the purpose of instructing the eommunity but I to wage political war. "Air. Churchill 's speeches are read throughout the world beeause he is a • great personalitv and people imagine what he says is the truth about Great L Britain. Alake no mistalce, I am not ] accusing him of telling untruths but of taking the whole of his knowledge of Great Britain from the headlines of the Daily Alail and Daily Express. The re- ! sult is that Englaiul is leading a sort of double life — that which appears in the papers and that of reality.