Publish and be It'd
THE PRESS
By DONALD McLACHLAN
M HERE is all the difference, as every ordinary I traveller knows, between a spot test and a systematic search. That one bag in twenty should be thoroughly searched at the customs as a deterrent to smuggling is accepted by the ordinary traveller who has nothing to declare; but if all bags are searched all day and every day, then he will ask questions about bureacracy and personal liberty. This is really the issue in the row between the Prime Minister and the Daily Express over the vetting of cables and telegrams handled by the GPO.
An informant told the newspaper early last week that they were being scrutinised by the security authorities 'as a matter of routine'; so the Express splashed the story on the front page on Tuesday with the name of Chapman Pincher attached. On the same day the Prime Minister told the Commons that this was 'sensationalised and inaccurate' and insisted that 'the powers and practice haye not changed for well over forty 1y/ears.' This can only mean that a warrant may be sworn on the authority of the Secretary of State allowing checks to be made under Section 4 of the Official Secrets Act of 1918. Routine checks are new, says Pincher: there is nothing new, says Wilson; the reporter of the decade v. the Prime Minister of the moment. What drama!
So much for the question of fact. But there ,is also a question of ethics or professional etiquette in which the whole press is interested. In the D Notices confidentially circulated to editors from time to time by the Defence Notices Committee they are warned of this or that kind of fact, tech- nical detail or general story which is regarded as secret by its services, security and broadcasting. members. They have Sir James Dunnett, Perma- nent Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, in the chair. Not because security is his Ministry's affair but because most of the secrets have to do with defence. If the secret is published it may damage the national in'erest—which means help the enemy—and lead to action under the Act. This system of warning without sanctions works well because Fleet Street, BBC and ITV know that their own men sit on the committee. In practice it is the spirit that matters more than the letter; and every editor reserve& the right to publish something if the Secretary of the Committee can- not persuade him that it is covered by existing or specially issued D Notices. If he does publish he is of course stealing a march on other news- papers which may have decided against publish- ing the story—and this is tempting.
It is clear that at no time did Whitehall claim that the story put up by the Express about the cable vetting was covered by existing D Notices —although Mr. Wilson on Tuesday said it was. When the committee's secretary, Colonel Lohan, said it was not, the Express made inquiries in other departments, fruitless for the newspaper but leading some official to instruct Colonel Lohan to request suppression. Having examined over a long lunch the two relevant D Notices of 1956 and 1961, he and Pincher agreed that they did not cover this story. All, therefore, that Lohan could do was to argue that to publish a big story on this information would be a mistake. So it was left to the Editor and a meeting of 'senior execu- tives' of the paper to decide whether publication was in the public interest or not.
On the face of it, there was a case for publica- tion : if censorship powers were being misused the fact should be made known. If the Govern- ment had genuine security reasons for stopping publication, then the Home Office should have explained the reasons to the editor of threat- ened action under the Official Secrets Act. If the Express is to be criticised for printing a sensationalised story about what The Times has called 'an open licence to screen and will,' Mr Wilson is to blame for his line of attack in the House. That the Ministry of Defence and Colonel Wigg are scared stiff of Chapman Pincher is well known. Also that the Prime Minister treats security troubles as personal affronts. But to insist that there has been 'a clear breach of two D Notices- which deal with related but different matters was a mistake. Sensational journalism should not be countered with a moral lecture. Mr
Wilson claimed, correctly, that the D Notice system depends on 'goodwill and, in effect, upon very little else,' but the goodwill of editors de- pends in turn on their belief that the security machinery is never used for the political con- venience of ministers. That belief is less firm than it used to be. As Pincher said on Wednesday, in a self-righteous article about his security expert- ise, the secretary of the Defence Notices Com- mittee 'has been scrupulously fair in ensuring that D Notices are not misused to suppress informa- tion just because it happens to be embarrassing to the Government.' If be is to be made the scapegoat in this affair, quite a number of journalists will want to know the reason why.
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