'Rousing the British-speaking world’: Australian newspaper proprietors and freedom of the press, 1940-1950

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.