BRITISH CENSORSHIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1940, Page 3

BRITISH CENSORSHIP

DEFENDED BY LONDON “TIMES” UNRIVALLED FACILITIES. GIVEN TO AMERICAN CORRESPONDENTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, November 27. “The Times,” reviewing the recent flood of criticism of the censorship from American correspondents in London, says: “The British authorities have given the Americans unrivalled facilities. Doors are open to them at which the British journalists have knocked in vain. The Americans have had a series of highly private interviews with Ministers and other responsible ’■personages, but they believe that since the ‘blitzkrieg’ they have been suffering from a number of grievances.

“First, they complain of the censors’ niggling alterations and then protest against the ruling forbidding the naming of bombed towns even after they have been announced by the Berlin radio. The censors are mostly following higher officers' rulings, but in the last few days it is these which have been most criticised. Everyone in Germany and most people in the south of England knew that Bristol, Birmingham and Southampton had been bombed, but the names could not be given in print or in a dispatch till last night after they were announced by, the 8.8. C. “It is not an accident that the Americans should in the last few days have criticised the British censorship and then painted the British position in unusually and unduly gloomy colours.

“Such criticisms as that of MrMiddleton (representative of the Associated Press of America), in which he asserted that Britain is nearing the end of her financial tether and alleges that she has not expanded her industrial output to the totalitarian level is legitimate, but his comparison of the British and French censorships is unfair as the British censorship has no mandate to impose censorship on views. Further. Mr Middleton’s conclusion that Britain is experiencing the darkest days since Dunkirk causes surprise on this side of the Atlantic. “These dispatches cannot have done much harm in America, but the British authorities should help the correspondents to send a fair and balanced picture. Less than the truth or more than the truth will only help the enemy. who is ready to exploit any point fol- the sake of propaganda.”