CENSORSHIP IN WAR-TIME

Southland Times, Issue 24877, 17 October 1942, Page 4

CENSORSHIP IN WAR-TIME

DIRECTOR’S LETTER AND REPLY (P.A.) WELLINGTON, October 16. The censorship again came up in the House of Representatives today, _ but was not discussed. The Prime Minister read a letter written to the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association by the Director of Publicity, Mr J. T. Paul, and a reply by the manager of the association, Mr L. J. Berry. The director’s letter was as follows: “With reference to the statement issued to the Press by the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, 1 have to request that you be. good enough to supply me with specific instances of the misuse of war-time censorship. For instance, one paragraph in the statement alleges that the ‘censorship m New Zealand has made a steady accumulation of restrictions on news of matters such as sabotage of production, shortcomings in the control .of the necessaries of life, administrative mistakes, extravagances that the war cannot condone and a number of minor but by no means unimportant matters that have their intimate bearing on the war.’ Will you therefore please state where any order issued by me has prohibited the publication of news relating to (1) sabotage of production; (2) shortcomings in the control of the necessaries of life; (3) administrative mistakes; (4) extravagances that even the war cannot condone; (5) any other of the number of minor but by no means unimportant matters that have their intimate bearing on the war.” ASSOCIATION’S REPLY The reply was as follows: “We have your letter in which you ask for details of orders issued by you prohibiting the publication of news. There would, . of course, be no difficulty in furnishing such details by the quotation in full *of official instructions and prohibitions issued by you, but in our opinion no good purpose would be served by doing so. The purpose of the association s statement was not to promote a public investigation of the administration of the censorship regulations, but to direct attention to the need for a clear definition of the limits within which the censorship of news would be confined. This purpose will not be advanced by a discussion of past events; it would be realized by a precise definition of news which, in the interests of national security, may not be published and an authoritative undertaking that no prohibitions would be imposed on news or comment outside those definitions.” Mr Fraser said he would make no comment. He would leave that to the public and the House.