TO: Director-General.

FROM: Controller (Home)

7th July, 1940.

NEWS AND TALKS.

TO BE DISCUSSED AT POLICY COMMITTEE, JULY 18th.

The Minister of Information wanted, as you know, a note on possible action following a recent meeting of his Policy Committee. I attach for your consideration and, if you agree, for passing on to him, a draft memorandum (Document A attached). This is done for his signature, and for circulation to all officers of the civil Departments and of the fighting Services who, under the aegis of the Ministry of Information, pass orders or instructions affecting B.B.C. news.

My experience in recent weeks, as Controller of B.B.C. News and Talks, leads me to feel emphatically that, while the system is working reasonably well, we should get more positive results if the minds of all concerned were cleared by getting from the Minister some such guidance as is given in the attached draft.

The Minister asked for concrete examples of the difficulties which we have to face. It would be easy to spin these into a long document, but I suggest that a study of Document B here attached will be enough. This is the 9’ o'clock News for Friday last, July 5th. You will note that I have pencilled passages on pages 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. These are all Government announcements, which came in during the course of the evening. They are of varying importance judged as News, i.e. as matters of general interest to the public as a whole. The information or instructions they contain would have been more easily taken in by listeners had we been free to rewrite them. They came together on an evening when there was a reasonable volume of interesting other news, and when we were committed (with, of course, the approval of the Ministry of Information) to a postscript about the lies of German radio, and to a talk by ‘Onlooker’. We had further one of the finest pieces of narrative from a service Department that has ever come in. It was the personal story of an R.A.F. gunner who had taken part in the action against the Scharnhorst. We had to cut that in half, and even then listeners had an unrelieved stretch of words from 9 o'clock until a quarter to 10. You will, I think, agree that this News may serve the Minister as a gloss to the instructions suggested for his signature.

The danger of having a mass of official material inserted at the last moment is twofold. It makes difficult the orderly presentation of news, and it leads to a steady decrease in our audience. The disadvantage of this when an important speaker follows is obvious. Listeners are easier to lose than to win back.

In summary, I want to be able, within the limits of following the Ministry policy lead, to keep up a maximum of listening interest in the bulletins. At present we are in danger of having these bulletins edited in two places at once and, thus, of being handicapped in getting the best out of the news staff.

(SGD) A.P. RYAN.