PRESS AND RADIO

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21178, 30 July 1940, Page 7

PRESS AND RADIO

CONTROVERSY IN ENGLAND DESCRIPTION OF BATTLES CRITICISM OF MINISTRY (United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright) LONDON, July 29 The Daily Telegraph in a leading article criticises the “ringside” commentary on the air battle over the Dover Straits broadcast by Mr Charles Gardner, of the 8.8. C., and the radio description of wartime Margate given by Mr J. B. Priestley, the author. “Mr Gardner,” the article states, “was exempted from all the rigorous restrictions imposed on the press and public. Mr Priestley did not -conceal the identity of the area he visited. “How are the restrictions still imposed on the press and public justifiable if they can be disregarded at will, and why are they disregarded for some favoured observers and not for all? “If disclosure of the localities of raided towns and descriptions of the damage jeopardise the national interest, it cannot matter whether the disclosures are made in newspapers or by radio. What official justification can be offered for such capricious discrimination?” The Daily Mail accuses the 8.8. C. of “favouritism and ineptitude” and demands that its present charter should be scrapped. Mr Ward Price, in an article on the Board of Censors proposed by the Minister of Information, says: “Mr Duff Cooper aims to hamper, restrain and penalise the press and to tighten upon it the dead hand of British bureaucracy embodied in the Ministry of Information, which is manned almost entirely by professional civil servants. “The Ministry ought to be reconstructed. It is still hampering and antagonising Dominion and American correspondents, particularly in delaying cablegrams until the 8.8. C. has broadcast to the world the news they contain. The Ministry should be effective, not merely obstructive.”