Word: censorships
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...that "as a member of the Censorship Board, Mr. Hyde-Creel had plenty of authority to crack down on the press." The Board of which I was a member had nothing whatsoever to do with the press, but was concerned entirely with censorship of the mails. I fought organization of this Board, considering it both stupid and unnecessary, but after its organization, persuaded the President to make me a member that I might minimize its activities. The right to exclude newspapers from the mails for seditious utterances was absolutely and entirely in the hands of the Postmaster General...
More rigorous than in Great Britain itself, Canadian censorship was comparable only to the strict wartime supervision of the press in France. Under its sweeping regulations the Minister of National Defense had power to take over all communications. Forbidden was any "adverse or unfavorable statement . . . likely to prejudice the defense of Canada" or prosecution of the war. Even weather reports were no longer published...
...force were censorship's more drastic provisions. Newsmen were not required to submit stories to the censor before publication, but-as in Germany-they were held personally responsible to the Government for what they wrote. For printing unwelcome news they could be fined $5,000, sentenced to five years in jail at hard labor...
...these regulations have been lightly administered by genial, mountainous Director of Censorship Walter Scott Thompson. Born in England, Director Thompson was a newspaperman himself (as a correspondent for various London journals he covered assignments in South Africa, Australia, the South Sea Islands) before he went to Canada in 1911, became an official pressagent for the Dominion's railways, steamships, hotels. It was Walter Thompson who took charge of publicity for the Royal Visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth last spring...
...what irked correspondents most was not censorship: it was the dark fog of secrecy in which the Government carried on its war. When war began, Canada set up a Bureau of Information to handle official news, then suddenly abandoned it, let each Government department appoint its own press officers. Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who had never liked press conferences anyhow (he once complained: "My every word is seized upon!"), promptly abolished them...