SECRET.
POLICY COMMITTEE
THURSDAY 28th NOVEMBER

EMBARGOES ON PUBLICATION OF NEWS

1. Some concern has been expressed at the fact that the recent senior appointments in the R.A.F. were announced on the German wireless before being made public in this country. This fact illustrates the need for a Government policy with regard to timing the publication of news.

2. Often news of this kind is issued by a Government Department under a condition that restricts its immediate use. The restriction varies in form but substantially it is aimed at keeping the news from publication until the Home morning papers of the next day. This involves keeping it from any use by the B.B.C. until that day, although it could in most cases have been broadcast by the B.B.C., both for home and abroad, on the previous afternoon or evening. This artificially retards our use of news.

3. This system came into existence before the war in order to balance the competing claims of Press and B.B.C. as purveyors of news. But ignores the fact that London is a world centre for news and that it contains numerous Empire, American and foreign correspondents, all of whom are naturally anxious to transmit to their Editors at the earliest possible moment any news which has been already issued to the British Press.

4. If they are allowed to do this (and, prima facie, it is hard to refuse cable facilities once the news has been actually issued here) then the news at once becomes available to Germany. The reasons are technical but news is always liable to go back to Germany from American or other neutral newspaper offices in a matter of minutes: nor for technical reasons can it be confined to the Empire since Canadian news from London cannot be kept from the U.S.A. This fact must either be accepted with the consequence of Germany being able to use such news before we do or one of the following alternatives must be adopted as the Government policy:-

5. All news messages leaving the country could be held up until the Home publication time, say 7.0 a.m. the following morning. The effect of this is to secure the first news for the Home Press, but to kill the news generally for the Empire and neutral Press, where it may miss the following day's papers altogether or arrive too late to be used. In any event they are likely to hear it first from the B.B.C. Arrangements of this sort are, naturally, very much resented by the overseas correspondents in this country and their Editors abroad: considering the importance of securing and retaining the goodwill of such correspondents, whose despatches from London inform Empire and neutral opinion, the adoption of an embargo of this type is strongly discouraged by this Ministry.

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6. The other alternative is to give up the practice of embargoing news altogether as unsuitable to wartime conditions. By this means the B.B.C. will not be artificially prevented from making the first available use of any important news, both for home and abroad: the news can be disseminated from London by all correspondents, so as to make the maximum use of it: and there will be no fear of neutral or enemy news organs being first with London news. The abandonment of embargoes would be very unpopular with at any rate certain sections of the London Press, owing to the long-standing fear of B.B.C. competition, but the more the B.B.C. comes to be accepted as a direct agency for Government views, the less substance there is in this opposition.

7. This Ministry therefore proposes that it should be an instruction to the officers of each Department, who are concerned with the issue of news to the Press, that time embargoes or restrictions on publication are not to be attached to such issues in any circumstances unless some exceptional occasion calls for it: further, that this Ministry must be consulted and its agreement obtained before an exception can be recognised.

C.R.