JOURNALISTS AND WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 226, 10 June 1915, Page 3

JOURNALISTS AND WAR.

"NEWS OF SERVICE TO ENEMY." At Portland Police Court a few j weeks ago a local reporter named Charles Carter Dyson was charged under the Defence of the Realm Act with transmitting news to the Press calculated to be of service to the enemy. The evidence showed that Mr. Dyson, a Portland journalist, sent telegraphic messages to a number of London pappers to the effeet that some obstruction had been struck by a torpedo boat, naming the precise locality and associating it with the sinking of the U 29. The Bench fined him £5. A charge was also preferred against Mr. Edward Newman, editor of a local paper, The Southern Times, of publishing a report of a similar nature in that paper which had "been sent by the defendant Dyson, who was the Portland reporter for the journal. The Bench eonvicted and imposed a fine of £lO, Mr. J. R. Phillips, president of the Newspaper Society, has protested strongly against the decision. He says: "A prosecution of the kind, undertaken by the Government or their officials, cuts at the very root of newspaper organisation and responsibility in this country. If objectionable news is published the Government, if they think fit; can proseeute the editors, who almost daily receive prohibition notices from the censor, and who have facili-' ties for sending news to this high official. What more ean the authorities want? How can a reporter at Portlaud, or in any provincial town, submit news to the censor before' sending it to the newspaper he serves? The censor at the Press Bureau is a known and recognised potentate. But who is the censor at Little Pedlington? Have we unknown censors dotted all over the 'country, or must each reporter, in trying to fulfil his duty to his employers, act in fear of fine or imprisonment and himself pose as Press Censor in competition with Sir Stanley Buckmaster? If he does, he may como into collision with the editor or proprietor of his paper. The position is clear. The Government may, -and possibly, ought to, prosecute persistently offending editors and proprietors. They have no right to interpose, with, fines, between a reporter and those whom he serves. Their notices' "and prohibitions are sent to editors, not to reporters, who thus have no intimation as to what may or. may not be published. I wish Mr. Dyson had given notice of appeal, for the principles involved are the most important yet raised in connection with the

censorship, and ought to be thrashed out before a tribunal weightier than that of the Portland magistrates."