THE 'DAILY EXPRESS' AND SECURITY
Sia,—I read in 'A Spectator's Notebook' this week : The other day the Daily Express published an unauthorised picture of the first of the series of British H-bomb tests. Was action taken against the paper? No: presumably because Security, though it would not have hesitated to come down on any- body weaker, was reluctant to take on Lord Beaverbrook.'
The facts are that the Daily Express received the picture in this office on Friday, May 24. In order that Security could have proper facilities for seeing the picture, we delayed publication until the following Monday morning. Security gave full approval for publication of the picture.
I am accustomed to the inaccuracies of the Spectator in relation to the Daily Express, but as this gross mistake concerns not only the Daily Express but our good relations with the Security authorities, I should be obliged if you would have the courtesy to print a full and fitting apology.— 'You rs faithfully,
B. D. PICKERING,
Editor
Daily Express, Fleet Street, London [Pharos writes: `Mr. Pickering (whom I must take this opportunity of congratulating on his recent elevation to the editor's chair) has missed my point. I was not criticising the Express : on the contrary, for a reason I refer to in the "Notebook" this week, I am sorry that this was not, in fact, a case of the Express deciding that Security was intruding unnecessarily on the press's precincts. But I under- stood that the edict had gone out that no press pictures of the H-bomb test were to be taken without 'official approval. If Security subsequently allowed an unofficial picture through, then I can only assume its left hand did not know what its right had ordered. Should Mr. Pickering be able to reassure me that this was not the case, and that the Express scoop was achieved by bona fide means, I shall be glad to tender the apologies he craves.'—Editor, Spectator.]
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