RC/191/5/1
EXECUTIVE BOARD
Paper for Discussion Friday. 37th December 1940

EMERGENCY NEWS SERVICE

Since the beginning of the war the Press, in particular the Provincial Press, have been anxious about the means by which they could produce papers in the event of severe bombing. The subject was discussed in the first half of the year between the Regional Administration Division and the Regional Information Officers and an attempt was made to draw up a scheme of an emergency news service. It was not completed by the time the intensive operations began in September, and since that time incidents have occurred in the Eastern Counties, Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, and Southampton which cut off normal supplies of national news for a time.

The newspaper group in the Birmingham district approached the Regional Information Officer and made strong representations to him that the Ministry should take a more active part in ensuring that the local papers could continue, and there was a meeting which Mr. Morris and Mr. Wiltshire attended at which some of the editors expressed themselves very strongly. In their view the Ministry should have some scheme whereby the local papers could obtain news in time to appear normally in the event of land lines, etc., failing,

Mr. Pick, when D.G., stated at a Regional Information Officers' Conference that the newspapers and news agencies should in the first place do all that was possible to insure themselves, but that if a situation arose which made it impossible for them to get news through it was the Ministry's responsibility to employ other means to assist.

Action taken in accordance with this pronouncement was first to endeavour to ensure that the representative bodies were working in the closest cooperation so that regional arrangements might be exploited to the full. Negotiations are at present in progress and it appears likely that schemes will be drawn up which will do something to restore the confidence of the local newspapers and the Regional Information Officers. There remains, however, the situation which might conceivably occur, when it is virtually impossible to get any land line, road or rail communications suitable for conveying a news service. As a standby in this rather remote contingency there is no effective alternative to a wireless broadcast service.

Earlier in the year a certain waveband on the 49 metre group was set apart for an emergency circuit for the B.B.C. and in the second place for emergency communications from the Ministry to the Regional Information Officers. In practice this waveband has never been used for either purpose. It is not so far as we know unsuitable from the security point of view, but at the same time the short wave is not necessarily well received all over the country. The Birmingham newspapers themselves suggested without prompting that we should try a wireless service, and the proposal has been warmly supported by Mr. Will and Mr. Bayley, the President of the Newspaper Society. The proposal was put semi-officially to the B.B.C., and it is understood that they desire to raise it at a Policy Committee or Executive Board meeting.

E.H.T.W.

24.12.40.