The D-notice is misunderstood but its collaborative spirit works

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/02/d-notice-national-security-blackout

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It is the most mythologised and misunderstood institution in British media, but now the D-notice (later the DA-notice) is no more. “Slapping a D-notice” on something the establishment wanted suppressed has been the stuff of thrillers, spy stories and conspiracy theories for more than a century.

Unsubstantiated, and almost certainly untrue, was a claim that the real story behind the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery had been suppressed by a D-notice to avoid a royal scandal.

Don Hale, the ex-newspaper editor who investigated allegations of a high-up paedophile ring in the 80s, said he was threatened with a D-notice by Special Branch, to make him surrender an incriminating dossier. Since there is no evidence of such a notice, it seems detectives simply fabricated one to intimidate him.

Misunderstandings, real or feigned, go right to the top. In the fallout from the Edward Snowden revelations, David Cameron said he did not want “to have to use injunctions or D-notices or the other tougher measures” against papers. His statement ignored several key facts: they are now defence advisory notices, the system is voluntary and the secretary of an independent committee, not the government, is responsible for them.

Now D-notices and DA-notices have gone, replaced by the more prosaic, and certainly more ponderous, DSMA (Defence and Security Media Advisory) notices. It may seem a trivial change, since the system itself remains in its new guise, but it reflects a continuing debate about the difficulty of protecting national security in the digital age.

The colourful history of the D-notice system dates from 1912, the Thirty-Nine Steps era of anarchist plots and German spy mania ahead of the first world war. Its original architect was Sir Graham Greene, the admiralty permanent under-secretary and uncle of the novelist. His aim was to create a “body representing the interests of the press with whom a standing agreement could be arranged” in time of war or emergency.

Green’s proposal was that the papers would agree not to publish anything deemed to endanger national security. Eventually, the system would be run by ex-military top brass, whose job was to arbitrate between journalists and officials.

That, with a few tweaks, is how it has worked for a century. It was, and remains, a very British idea; emphatically not censorship (though critics would argue otherwise) but voluntary, responsible media restraint. There are now five standing notices setting out the national security information which is covered by the system. Stories which are simply embarrassing to officialdom remain fair game.

Inevitably, the greatest source of argument has always been about the definition of national security, and if a particular fact or story would harm it. Surprisingly, secretaries often took the media’s part, displaying a spirited independence that led to conflicts with the mandarins.

Best known was Colonel “Sammy” Lohan, described by the Sunday Times as “loud and jolly, fond of good lunches, frantically extroverted, full of jokes and funny voices, loved by all defence journalists”. Lohan was at the centre of the 1967 “D-notice Affair”, when Chapman Pincher, legendary defence correspondent of the Daily Express, revealed how the intelligence agencies were routinely vetting cables sent to and from overseas addresses.

The saga was enlivened by details of a long lunch at L’Ecu restaurant in Jermyn Street when Lohan and Pincher tried to agree what could be published, and late night carousing at the Garrick club by senior Express editors while the government made a last-minute attempt to stop the presses.

In the ensuing political row, the prime minister Harold Wilson accused the Express of breaching D-notices. Lohan eventually resigned after being criticised by an official inquiry. His parting shot was a warning that the government wanted to scrap the D-notice system and replace it with a “committee of civil servants” who would take weeks deciding “if a story was good, bad or indifferent”.

He was wrong. The storm blew over and D-notices survived, eventually becoming “defence advisory notices” to emphasise the voluntary nature of the arrangement.

Ironically, the system’s most recent crisis was precipitated by another row over government intelligence surveillance. When the Guardian refrained from consulting the DA-notice secretary before publishing the Snowden leaks, fearing it would lead to an injunction, the Ministry of Defence permanent under-secretary, Jon Thompson, wondered, not unreasonably, if the system designed to stop such stories was fit for purpose.

Thompson set up a review to find out. The reviewers, led by the vice-chancellor of Essex University, Anthony Forster, and including the former Guardian editor Peter Preston and Peter Wright, editor emeritus at Associated Newspapers, decided it still broadly worked but needed modernising. The name change, they said, was key to reflect the system’s shifting focus from military to intelligence stories.

Other measures will come, including the recruitment of more digital media members. The notices, which still refer to “ciphers and secure communications”, need rewriting for the 21st century. There remains a strong case for an independent chairman, a review recommendation supported by the media but rejected by the government.

Nevertheless, 103 years on, the arrangement still seems to have a place; on average a journalist consults the secretariat every working day. Both sides agree there is benefit in a voluntary system – whatever it is called – which helps mainstream media avoid inadvertently jeopardising national security or endangering life. From the media side, it has to be better than any coercive alternative amounting to overt government censorship.

Simon Bucks is vice-chair of the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee and chair of the media side