CENSORS ATTACKED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1943, Page 3

CENSORS ATTACKED

BV BRITISH CORRESPONDENT FROM AUSTRALIA POSITION QUITE IMPOSSIBLE AT TIMES. POLITICS AND PAROCHIAL OUTLOOK. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, February 17. “Political interference and the parochial outlook of individual censors make the working conditions for overseas correspondents in Australia at times quite impossible,” declared the “Daily Mail’s” war correspondent, Noel Monks, when interviewed by the “World’s Press News” on his arrival in London after a year in Australia. The interview appears under the heading, “Amazing Disclosures on Australian Censorship.” Mr Monks said that, in addition to the Australian censorship, overseas correspondents had to contend with General MacArthur’s equally drastic military censorship. He was finally forced to return to Britain because he was unable to give a true picture' of events. Political censorship refused to allow mention of the word censorship in overseas dispatches, and for that reason it was impossible for correspondents to inform their offices that their messages had been touched. Moreover, correspondents often were not allowed to send service messages to their offices. Even Germany honoured such messages. “I had at least six service messages not containing security data banned, and finally, in despair,” said Mr Monks, “I sent a message from Sydney, dispirited, disheartened, disgusted, disgruntled.’ Transmission of this was refused on the ground that it might convey to my office that I was unhappy in Aus-, tralia.” Constructive criticism of the Australian political regime was banned time after time; even editorial comment from the newspapers and extracts from the speeches in the House of Representatives were prohibited. “Even if we got through these pitfalls,” he continued, ‘we still had to contend with General MacArthur’s almost fantastic military censorship, which is the worst I have ever experienced in any war I have reported. Australian censors, moreover, employed intimidation methods, particularly against British correspondents, Mr Monks said, adding, “One censor threatened to refuse me permission to return to England (Mr Monks was born in Australia) because of the fuss I was making about the censorship. The same censor told the ‘News Chronicle’ war correspondent, Mr Dickson Brown, that he was a fifth columnist and threatened him with imprisonment. ■ I reported both cases to the Attorney-General, Dr. Evatt, who took disciplinary action.” The army’s gigantic public relations section showed marked lack of cooperation to overseas correspondents, Mr Monks said. “Some of the greatest heartbreaks and insults for overseas correspondents were at the hands of these people, who, because of their newspaper experience, should have known better. War correspondents do not rank with this public relations outfit. They are regarded as a nuisance.” When he received his “blessed release” he asked the head of this organisation for the first favour he had ever asked in Australia, namely, priority for a plane from Melbourne to Brisbane in order to catch a plane for America. The director refused to pass on the request to the military authorities, but General Winter immediately obtained him a seat in a plane in which the general himself was travelling. Mr Monks says that the most important newspaper executives championed the cause of the overseas correspondents, who were unable to give the outside world a proper picture of. the events in Australia, yet the correspondents were unable to send out important resolutions by newspaper proprietors protesting against political rulings affecting the censorship Mr Monks said he was also unable to send out a message reporting “An extraordinary demand from the floor of the House in Canberra that so important and influential a patriot as Sir Keith Murdoch should be interned because he was campaigning for correction of the muddles of censorship and politcal interference with the primary direction of the war.” Mr Monks concluded by saying that the Australian censorship was the worst he had experienced within eight years of reporting in Abyssinia, Spain, and France in the Battle of Britain and in the United States and the Middle East. Even Abyssinians had a better idea of censorship than the Australians. He was convinced that the British censorship, in spite of the complants against it, was the world’s fairest and most intelligent.