Australian Media Traditions 2007

This paper provides an assessment of the role of Australian newspaper proprietors, most notably, Sir Keith Murdoch, Lloyd Dumas and Eric Kennedy, in campaigning for the freedom of the press in opposition to the proposed United Nations Covenants and its Geneva Conference of 1948. Drawing upon extensive private and Commonwealth Press Union correspondence, it outlines the main steps taken by Australian proprietors and seeks to explain the range of factors, internal and international, which led to their intense lobbying of the Press Union and other press organizations, both British and American, in the context of the United Nations, the Cold War and the Press Union’s own conferences of 1946 and 1950. The author has conducted a nationally funded study on the Press Union in conjunction with British-based Indian scholar Dr Chandrika Kaul. This paper provides an assessment of the prominent role played by Australian newspaper proprietors, most notably, Sir Keith Murdoch, Lloyd Dumas and Eric Kennedy, in campaigning for freedom of the press in opposition to the war-time Labor government, in the first instance, and subsequently against the proposed United Nations ’ Freedom of Information Covenant during 1948. It begins by briefly outlining the domestic war-time situation, including divisions within the newspaper industry, before examining the escalation and internationalisation of the Australian campaign in the post war period. Drawing upon extensive private correspondence, it outlines the active steps taken by Australian proprietors in the latter instance, and seeks to explain the range of factors, internal as well as international, which drove them to lobby the British Council of the Press Union, Dominion newspaper interests and those in the United States. This analysis will build upon previous work by the author and other media historians (Kaul, 2006) in examining the complex role of the Press Union, including the willingness of the Dominion press and its delegations to use the Press Union as a vehicle for private and political interests, as well as larger Commonwealth concern