Writers score early release
Hit scoops on conferences by Reuters, TASS
Cairo, Egypt (UP) –
Seventy Allied newspaper correspondents, in a resolution to Brendan Bracken, head of the British Ministry of Information, and Elmer Davis, head of the OWI, today protested against press arrangements and breaking of releases dates on conferences of Allied leaders in the Middle East.
The resolution said:
Correspondents twice have been let down in the matter of safeguarding releases. The responsible government department so underestimated the importance of the occasion as to entrust its handling to an official with only the slightest experience in press or public relations.
The resolution added:
Many assurances given to the correspondents were not honored.
The correspondents – who watched the initial break on the Cairo Conference come from Reuters in a Lisbon dispatch and the news of the Tehran Conference released by the Russian news agency TASS via the Moscow radio – felt that the fault lay not with British or OWI officials who handled the press relations, but with Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt.
Correspondents were not allowed any access to Mr. Churchill, Mr. Roosevelt or Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, and repeated requests for a press conference were turned down. After Gen. Chiang left Cairo, it was learned that he would have been glad to see the newspapermen.