Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER Editorial Board: Stephen Aikroyd, Donald Alexander, M.i\ Vndirson, Kdgar Anstey, Ceoflrey Bell, Pan] Fletcher, Sinclai] Road, John Taylor, Grahame Ilurp. Baafl W JUNE-JULY 1947 VOL 6 NO 57 PUBLISHED BY FILM CENTRE 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON W I 97 LABOUR PAINS 98 NOTES OF THE MONTH 99 THE BRITISH CINEMA AT THE GALLUP 100-101 SHAKESPEARE ON THE SCREEN AND ON THE AIR 102 CZECH FILM FESTIVAL 103 HISTORY ON FILM 104-105 FILM REVIEWS Annual subscription 6s. (published six times a year) 106 MONSIEUR VERDOUX 107 WORM'S EYE VIEW 108 FILMS ON MACHINERY OF DEMO( R \( } 109 FEATURf I I I \1 MUSIC AND THE DOCUMENTARY 110 SCIENTIFIC FILM NEWS 111-112 CORRESPONDENCE Bulk orders up to SO copies for schools and Film Societies LABOUR PAINS Confusion in the public information services is becoming worse confounded. While a punch-drunk COI staggers round the ring, boxing its own shadow and failing to avoid a hail of administrative uppercuts, a rival ring appears to be being erected for a demonstration round by the Information Officer for the Production Campaign under Sir E. Plowden. The aimlessness of our public information services today may be directly traced to the failure of the Labour Government to realize the basic necessities of those services. True, they did not abolish the Government information organization as the Tories would have done. But in getting rid of the Ministry of Information, which, for all its faults, had succeeded in providing the right mixture of stimulus and information over a period of six difficult years, a fundamental error was made. The Information Services were deprived of status, of ministerial representation in the House, and, to a large degree, of those immediate powers of initiation and creation without which it is almost impossible for them to survive. The principles of public information demand, firstly, the establishment of a working relationship between creative workers and administrative workers, based on mutual understanding of purpose and method ; secondly, a simple channel through which directives and policy mav reach the information people, and, thirdly, the provision of the maximum freedom (having regard to the need to check carefully all expenditure of public moneys) for the creative and technical experts whose job it is to translate information into terms of the mass-media of communication. There are two main methods by which these principles can be achieved. The first is by the creation of a specific department with a Minister of Cabinet status under whom it directly works. This was in essence the wartime method. The second is by the creation of a National Board, representative of the Government, the administrative machine, and the public, with at least one Minister as a member and chairman, who again would be the spokesman of the information services m the House. This is, in essence, the method adopted by the Canadian Government. The status of the Central Office of Information represents an uneasy and almost cowardk compromise between these two methods and as a result it is unable to fulfil the three principles of information either with speed or with efficiency. Structurally, it is unwieldy. Its job is to fulfil the informational needs of Government Departments, and of Downing Street, vis-d-vis the public at large, but the machine is so full of cogs and pulleys many of them duplicated — that it is reminiscent more of Heath Robinson or Rube Goldberg, than of the technological age. Its domination by two committees of PROs and two Ministers — the one concerned with overseas, and the other with home matters — is bad enough. Worse still is the general effect of watertight departmentalization at a time when most major public issues cannot be regarded as the perquisite of any single department, but rather as a reflection of the activities of whole groups of departments. Psychologically, the COI suffers acutely from its status a 'Agency'. Although this word can be regarded as active, rather than passive, in intent, its interpretation under the existing set-up is likely to be in the direction of passivity, both internally and from the point of view of the user departments. Information budgets, like all other budgets, are limited. Departments are compelled to use the COI for their information programmes (quite rightly, since otherwise chaos would ensue), and are therefore inclined to press violently for maximum attention to their own programmes. On the other hand, the COI, finding itself torn between thirty or so separate programmes which are bound to total something much in excess of the overall budget, has no direct court of appeal other than the unwieldy structure at the top. which, incidentally, includes tl sembled PROs of all the departments concerned. Moreover, the creative aspect of information demands the initiation, by the ( <>l itself, of specific plans and programmes; and for the reasons already stated this important aspect of its work seems being pushed more and more to the wall. The whole question o\' public information must be examined afresh. If oecessar) the COI must be written off as a costly experiment, and a fresh start made. This is a task to which Mr Herbert Morrison might well turn his immediate attention. I oi a start, he might re-read the recommendations of the Arts i nquirv Rep. the I actual I ilm. the constitution of the Canadian Wartime Information Hoard and National 1 ilm Hoard, and. not least, a COTJ tial document, believed to have been drawn up for him hv John Grierson in 1946, when the constitution o\ the ( oi was under consideration. In an) case, something must be <.\<.>nc. and quicklv.