A Spectator's Notebook
I CANNOT help feeling that the press is being a bit pompous about the daily news conferences given by Mr. Wilson, Mr. Maudling and Mr. Grimond. The association of lobby journ- alists and the indust- rial correspondents' group both sent impassioned protests to the party auth- orities some weeks ago, arguing that the conferences were traditionally for the benefit of the press and that they should not be televised. These objections were finally met by the parties with an agreement that only filmed excerpts of the conferences would be shown on television, and that no journalist ask- ing a question would be seen by viewers. I can understand and sympathise with the argument that there is no reason why the television news organisations should get the assistance of journ- alists (who are asking the expert questions) without paying for it. But I suspect a lot of the ballyhoo is a reflex action and is part of the Luddite fear that newspapers in general and many journalists in particular have of television. Mr. David Wood, the lobby correspondent of The Times, who got up at the beginning of the conferences and asked, in the stuffiest Printing House Square manner, and 'as a matter of prin- ciple,' what the status of television at the meet- ings was, ought to be the first to realise that correspondents of, his high calibre are not em- ployed merely to take down in shorthand the ipsissima verb(' of the party bigwigs and repro- duce them in his paper in a tasteful order. Mr. Wood's admirable writings are valuable because of his experience, his judgments and his con- tacts, and I fail to see why his comments on the conferences should be less valuable simply be- cause some of the statements may have been seen on television the previous evening. Television is bound to usurp many of the strictly news func- tions of the press as time goes on, and the sooner papers and journalists accept this and outflank the movement by their wits, the less painful will be the proceis.
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