JOINT STANDING COMMITTEE OF REUTERS AND THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

Note for Sub-Committee on Inclusion of Enemy Communiqués

It has been proposed to exclude the texts of enemy communiqués from the Globereuter wireless service, which is taken in the Empire, the Middle and Far East and Latin America.

2. The grounds for the proposal are that, in the absence of the possibility of regularly quoting authoritative and newsworthy comment at the same time as the communiqué itself, the enemy claims acquire a certain verisimilitude in regions in which they might otherwise be discounted, by being carried in a British news service, and that there is much other material available which has a better claim to transmission at the public expense.

3. Reuters’ reply to this argument is that Globereuter claims to be an independent world news service and has in fact to compete on equal or inferior terms with other such services in a number of regions. Two cases in particular lend support to the view that the inclusion or exclusion of enemy communiqués may prove to be the test of whether Reuter continues to be regarded as an independent world news service. The first is a recent telegram from H.M. Ambassador at Santiago, where Reuters are at present in danger of losing their newly-acquired subscriptions to American competition: “All enemy communiqués essential”. The second is the position in South Africa, where the South African Press Association are content to rely solely on the Globereuter service for their world news in return for this one concession to the claims of objectivity.

4. The question has now been revived in a more acute form as a result of the demand by the American agencies to be allowed to compete with Reuters on equal terms within the British Empire. These agencies include in their service not only the communiqués of both sides, but a great deal of enemy news. If new restrictions are placed on the content of the Globereuter service and at the same time American agencies are admitted on an equal commercial footing into British territory (e.g. Malaya) the result will be the gradual exclusion of Reuters service from British territory and the disappearance of the Agency's principal source of revenue (since newspapers cannot afford, and do not require, to subscribe to more than one major world news service).

5. If a decision is taken in favour of the exclusion of enemy communiqués from Globereuter it will be necessary for the Ministry either (a) to inform the interested parties that the American agencies cannot be permitted to distribute in British territory unless they are prepared to have all enemy communiqués and news excluded from their service; or (b) to accept the probable commercial worsting of Globereuter in the British Empire and Latin America, with its financial implications.

6. If such a decision is not taken it will be to the Ministry's interest (a) to investigate the possibility of having the communiqués systematically omitted from the Reuter wireless service at the receiving end in Cairo and any other centre where they are not in demand and (b) to perfect the arrangements now in operation for obtaining immediate authoritative rebuttals of enemy claims wherever possible, and failing this, for the provision of suitable general comment advocating “reserve”.