I am afraid I cannot. There is no author's name to the article. It quotes mainly from a number of other authors. I am quoting from page 543 of the June, 1937, issue of The Round Table:—
"The problem of British publicity in the Far East does not stand alone. It has its counterpart in South America, and it is repeated in some form or another in North Africa, in the Middle East and on the Continent of Europe. The corollary of the open door in China was the open door in South America. But transmission costs and other conditions were adverse there to anything more than a very limited British service. Here is an extract from the speech delivered by the Prince of Wales after returning from his tour in 1931: ‘I would like to say a word about the position of the British news services to foreign countries, and I will, for example, take South America, which was the last of the great Continents I visited this year. There is no actual shortage of news in South America dealing with events in Great Britain and Ireland, and this country gets a very fair share of the space in the important newspapers, but, with the exception of a limited service of news sent to Argentina by Reuters, and except for a few special messages by their own representatives to a few papers, all news sent from England to Latin America is transmitted by non-British agencies. What is the result of this? The result is that by the time this news reaches the Latin American reader he sees us and our affairs through spectacles which are neither ours nor those of his own country. I most sincerely hope that some means can be found to increase the volume of purely British news to South America and I commend this particular matter to the attention of this Association.' In consequence of the Prince of Wales' intervention, a sustained effort was made to remedy the deficiency to which he drew attention, and some time later in another public speech, His Royal Highness was able to say: ‘I took the opportunity on my return last May to express my views to this country, and I emphasised the importance of supplying the great South American Continent with fuller and more accurate reports of what is going on here. Reuters have now established a daily news service to South America and, as regards Argentina, I am grateful to my friend, Jorge Mitre, of La Nation, and to the Buenos Aires Herald for co-operating most heartily in this scheme.”
The author of the article goes on to say:
"But alas in spite of heavy financial sacrifice by Reuters, persisted in for nearly three years, the experiment in the end had to be abandoned; to-day South America is very little better off in the matter of British news and world news carried through British channels than it was ten years ago. On the other hand, thanks to the French official facilities it enjoys, the Havas Agency transmits to South America some 15,000 words a day on world intelligence, which includes British news as seen through French eyes. The Havas telegram, quoted earlier in this article, from the North China Daily News, provides a fair idea of the risk to which this exposes British prestige. It is not necessary to impute base motives to Havas. It is enough that the agency should be an honourable exponent, as undoubtedly it is, of French policy and a sympathetic interpreter of the French point of view. But its very zeal and efficiency in that rôle must render Havas unsuitable as a provider and editor of British news in any foreign land. Within the last few weeks, the secretary of the British Chamber of Commerce at Sao Paulo, in Brazil, referring in the Daily Telegraph to the Italian propagandists who, in the Levant and elsewhere, ‘are assiduously spreading the doctrine that Britain is “on the run” everywhere, and that the Empire will shortly break up’, drew attention, as many have before him, to the highly unsatisfactory British news situation in South America. He said: ‘News of Britain and things British comes, for the most part, to the South American countries via non-British Press agencies, whose news, to say the least, is often biassed. In Brazil, for example, the only British news service is a partial one picked up from the air by one newspaper in this city. All the other foreign news in Brazil is received from American and French agencies who, naturally, are not interested in presenting facts favourable to British prestige, but are more concerned with serving up news of a sensational nature (not infrequently detrimental to British interests).’ For years the British Chamber of Commerce have urged the need for British news services, inaugurated, if necessary, with official backing in their early stages.
Of news of a sensational nature, detrimental to British interests, a typical example was provided at the time of the Invergordon trouble. That episode was seized upon by at least one American agency distributing a big service in South America. It was presented to its clientele throughout the Continent as a flaring narrative which magnified out of all proportion what had happened and which could only leave the average reader under the impression that the British Navy was rotten with unrest and a spirit of mutiny rampant. One need not attribute to the men responsible for this narrative any hatred of Britain or any desire to hurt us abroad. They probably were animated by nothing worse than an excited impulse to produce ‘a colourful story' and ‘to play up the high lights.' But in doing so they were undoubtedly guilty of misrepresenting grossly this country and equally grossly misleading the people of South America. None could condemn this more readily than responsible Americans. Within the past few weeks the United States Ambassador in London, himself an important newspaper proprietor, spoke at a public luncheon of the unfortunate fact that newspapers were often propagandists of evil. Their disposition ‘to play up to what is sensational instead of sound and usual, and what is remarkable and extraordinary instead of what is the habit of the people, is one of the things that tend to mislead the American public about Great Britain and the British public about the United States.' The evil here rightly condemned by His Excellency was the evil inherent in the telegrams to South America about the Invergordon trouble.
The American services in South America, however, are not so prejudiced to Great Britain as the French. The not unnatural disposition of Havas day by day and week by week is to give to the people of South America, no less than to the people of the Far East and of the Continent of Europe wherever the Havas service circulates, the French aspect of international politics, and to wrest from the British the function that hitherto Reuters have in the main fulfilled as the international supplier of world news. Its growing activity in this respect has excited the misgivings even of Americans, and within the last few years both President Roosevelt and the Secretary of State have commented adversely upon the character of the French news services in South America.
Much might be said about the French, German, Italian and Russian wireless services in Egypt, the Levant, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, all of them working to Great Britain's disadvantage and designed to supplant or discredit British news and British influence. Still more might be said about the growth and the effect of these services on the continent of Europe. Both Havas and the D.N.B., by means of their subsidised wireless broadcasts, are supplying newspapers of all nationalities in Europe at nominal, not to say derisory, rates, services embodying not only their own national news, but also news from the rest of the world, most of which they have acquired from Reuters but which in the process of relaying loses its Reuter complexion and takes on that of the distributing agency. The scope for mischief here can easily be seen. That it does not escape attention is clear from an article by a Norwegian journalist of standing, Mr. Henry Rsoch, who, writing in the Oslo Aftenposten as recently as 24th April last, remarked upon the growth of the D.N.B. and Havas services to the detriment of Reuters and struck a note of warning. In Mr. Rsoch's opinion, the Reuter agency, which, to use his own words, has pumped more material into the international news stream than any of its rivals, now works with great and evergrowing difficulty, and month by month it is harder for news from British sources, and news of British affairs, to find their way into that news stream.
That is the conclusion reached by a detached observer, one, presumably, more friendly than otherwise towards this country. It is a conclusion compatible with the facts, and it is one that we cannot ignore with impunity."
I merely quoted this article at some length to the House to adopt from it the arguments and the conclusions that it reached; that, undoubtedly, the viewpoint of a country must become distorted if it is presented through a channel other than a national channel, if it is presented through the spectacles of another continent. I would refer the House to some other shorter and possibly more recent references illustrating the importance of news in other spheres. There is a book written in 1946 by Mr. Francis Williams who was British war-time Controller of News and Censorship. The title of the book is Press, Parliament and People. On page 213 it deals with the importance of news from a trade point of view. He says:—
"Trade was said in the days of imperialist expansion to follow the flag. To-day it tends to follow the news. If the newspapers of a foreign country which is an actual or potential market for manufactured goods take only, shall we say, an American news service, which quite naturally includes a high proportion of news concerning American developments or news written with an American slant, there is a strong possibility that the merchants and people of that country will become more conscious of American enterprise than that of other countries and will place orders for goods with American manufacturers. The same is of course equally true of the long-term effect of British news services to foreign countries.
And, since the possibility of severe competition in export markets is a factor very present in the minds of all Governments, the commercial value of a successful international news service is a factor that has to be taken into account. It has undoubtedly played some part in the battle for territories fought between the great news agencies in the past, particularly in the struggle for South American territories. It is almost certainly one of the important factors behind the big expansion of American news services which is now taking place and their drive to secure a predominant hold in the European newspaper market."
There has been, and I think there still is, quite an important struggle in South America for the South American news market. Until the recent war the French news agency had practically a monopoly of South American news markets. I do not know to what extent it has been able to maintain its hold on the news market of South America but the influence of the French news services in South America has been, and still is, a matter of grave concern to British foreign policy. Here in Ireland we have no Irish news agency. Because of transmission difficulties, because of our unimportance, if you like, in the stream of world affairs, all the news that emanates in Ireland is canalised through London. It may be prepared here by correspondents but finally it is canalised through London offices. In our case the need for an independent source of news about Ireland, which will not be canalised through any foreign channels, is particularly important from a number of different points of view. First of all, unlike most other countries we have a national objective to achieve. We still have to gain full control of our own country. We still have to assert the rights of the Irish people to determine their own form of Government and their own affairs without outside interference. In the second place, for one reason or another we have to counteract a good deal of hostile propaganda, unfair propaganda about Ireland that is published constantly in the Press of the world. From the third point of view, we need news channels of our own in order to encourage the development of our industrial life, of our foreign trade, of our tourist traffic, to make known our cultural developments and also to make known our viewpoints in the field of international affairs as the need arises.
It is only, as I pointed out, in the last 25 years or so that we have got control of our own affairs. In that period of time we have not been able to develop the international trade that we should normally have had, having regard to our size and importance in the economic life of Europe. Likewise, probably because of lack of development here of one kind or another, we have not developed a tourist traffic of the magnitude which we could have developed if we had been independent economically before. I feel to a certain extent that it should not be necessary for me to justify the need that exists for the creation of this news agency, because I feel the Leader of the Opposition himself set out last year in the course of a debate in this House many of the reasons which make it imperative. I may refer the House to the speech made by Deputy de Valera, reported in Volume 112, No. 5, column 883, and made on the 20th of July last year.