PRESS CENSORSHIP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 August 1942, Page 4

PRESS CENSORSHIP

STANDARDS IN UNITED KINGDOM FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION OF OPINION. NO ATTEMPT TO STIFLE CRITICISM. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, August 17. _ With the subject of Press censorship so closely engaging public attention, prominence is given to censorship methods in Britain, as revealed by Mr Irvine Douglas, manager and editor of the Australian Associated Press,, kondon, who has been on a short visit to Australia. He writes: “Until this year, agencies and correspondents cabling news abroad from Britain were perfectly free to say what they liked about the manner in which Britain was conducting the war, provided they gave away no military information. The censorship’s liberalism went even further. It adhered to the rule that anything, once it had been published in the British Press, could be sent abroad. “Early this year the British authorities revoked this rule, because they felt that certain articles cabled abroad were being couched in language calculated to cause disunity among the Allied nations, and for the first time in over two years of war it was laid down that opinion cabled abroad was subject to censorship. I have reason to believe, however, that this new rule has scarcely ever been invoked. “No provision in the British censorship rules would permit the suppression of a single word in the speech or statement of any representative of the people, unless the security of the Allied cause was involved. To attempt to stifle criticism of the Government, or its method of conducting the war, would never be allowed to enter the head of any censor. “The other day Lady Astor, M.P., made a speech in which she said some things about Russia which were strongly criticised. I was astounded to hear some well-informed people in Sydney say that this speech should have been censored. Now one may have ones own views on the wisdom of the speech, but that it should have become accepted in a British democracy that it should have been suppressed was staggering, and gave some inkling of the extent to which the Australian concept of the functions of censorship had departed from the British. I would go so far as to hazard a guess that, however much individuals in Britain might have differed from Lady Astor’s views, not one person there would dream of suggesting that the speech should have been censored. “One of the things for which the Democracies are fighting is freedom of speech and a free Press, and one of the most vitalising influences in Britain since the beginning of the war has been the vigorous and completely untrammeled manner in which the Press has ventilated public opinion and forced the Government, on more than one occasion, to effect reforms in the conduct of the war. The British Press is recognised as an integral part in the mechanism of democratic government, and so far the censorship has not dared to tamper' with it.”