PLEASED COMMENT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 199, 20 May 1944, Page 8

PLEASED COMMENT

Authorities’ Response To / Force Of Opinion LIBERA LIZED AUSTRALIAN CENSORSHIP CODE 'By T<• legra p hPress Ass nCo py rl g lit.) (Special Australian C’orrespunilent.i SYDNEY. May 19. The new code of censorship principles liberalizing the Australian censorship system is being enthusiastically received. Its declaration that “censorship shall be imposed exclusively for reasons of defence security’’ is accepted as a prompt and democratic response by the Government to-the force of public opinion, which had strongly resented earlier actions by the censor. The litigation over the matter lias been settled by agreement. “It is to the Government s credit that it has so frankly recognized the true functions and limitations of the censorship,” declares the . “Sydney Morning Herald” in an editorial today. “Though 'defence security,’ as the new code points out, cannot be exhaustively defined, by no straining ami stretching of meaning can it be interpreted to embrace activities by the pensor in the political or industrial fields. “Political censorship is the negation of the very concepts of liberty and democracy. It was because it believed that the establishment of this principle was essential in the public interest that the Press took the action which led to the crisis of April 17. , ~ “It is the publie interest that would suffer deeply and irreparably were the Press to default in its duty of resisting what it honestly believed to be encroachments upon the most fundamental of democratic liberties —the right of free expression within the proper bounds of defence needs.” “The conflict arose because the Government was wrongly and impetuously advised,” says the Sydney “Daily Telegraph.” “but it has hastened to redress the damage that the advice. caused byremoving from the censorship features which are obnoxious to every free man. “The right to report and comment freely upon the news of the day is not the exclusive trade or right of any newspaper. It is the right of the people, and a free Press is the only vehicle through which they can exercise (his privilege. How precious a privilege it is the people of half the world, who are now living in mental and physical slavery., under the heel of a political censorship, could attest.” .