CENSOR AND MORALE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 191, 11 May 1944, Page 5

CENSOR AND MORALE

Policy Again Challenged In Australia , INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES m , , SYDNEY. May 10. The conference of the Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association unanimously adopted a resolution stating: This conference, representing all the daily metropolitan newspapers in Australia. views with grave anxiety the extent to which the censorship has been used for purposes entirely unrelated to security. “It declares its unreserved acceptance of a censorship designed to prevent the disclosure of any matter of military value to the enemy. “It is convinced that any attempt to use the censorship to maintain morale by suppression, as was done in France in 1940, is wrong and dangerous, and that any further effort to distort or.limit reports of industrial disputes is contrary to the public interest. “The conference believes the knowledge that such matters are subject to censorship will destroy public confidence in what is published, and therefore declares itself irrevocably opposed to the continuance of such practices, and this conference fully supports the action of certain newspapers in challenging the political censorship, even to the extent of suffering suppression in order to uphold the principles of freedom of expression within the requirements of national security.” ..