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old General Orders that press enquiries should not be dealt with but be referred to the Information Services Department. To-day C.D.O.s have been instructed to go to great lengths to avoid saying "No comment". The change in Government relations with the publicity media in recent years has been little short of revolutionary and I think it would not have been possible to achieve so quickly the wide general acceptance of the C.D.O. scheme without the continuous and sustained interest of the press, radio and television stations. Two C.D.0.s who have kept detailed figures of approaches for interviews have between then given, on the average, three press interviews, two radio interviews and one television interview a week since they were appointed.
103.
Publicity on this scale cannot be bought it can only reflect the media's assessment that C.D.O. news helps to sell. On our part
we have been anxious to do all we can to help get the news but we have had difficulties as well as considerable help in doing our job. I discuss
my assessment of the impact of this publicity in the next section and deal here only with the more technical aspects.
104.
Although we have not guarded the identity of C.D.O.s before their appointment like state secrets we did want to give them a chance to have a look round their Districts before being exposed to the press. Sometimes this was possible but more often the identity was discovered,
a press question was put in and, since we could not deny the appointment, a hurried announcement was made. One embarrassment with a new scheme
/is ...