HOSPITAL INQUIRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 23 August 1926, Page 6

HOSPITAL INQUIRY.

With an assumption of omniscience frequently attributed to the daily Press, but which, in fact, we more often find associated with certain members of the legal profession when engaged in special pleading in the Courts, counsel for the Hospital Board at the final sitting of the Commission on Saturday, went out of hie way to censure the Auckland "Star" for the series of articles on the hospital that appeared in these columns some months ago. He asserted that the newspaper had not undertaken to prove before the Commission the complaints that those articles contained. Counsel was, or should have been, aware that the Auckland "Star" was not invited to be' represented, and further, that statements in a newspaper article, even when vouched for by the writer of the article, are inadmissible as evidence; and that it is necessary to take the evidence of the individuals who originally made the assertions. The articles in question were compiled by a member of the staff of the newspaper as the outcome of numerous interviews with at least half a dozen individuals actively and directly connected with the institution, men whose good intent and knowledge there was no reason to doubt. Under no circumstances would it have been possible for the newspaper to betray the confidence of these persons, but it urged that evidence sufficiently comprehensive to cover all sources of information should be called. If those who originally gave the information were not prepared to substantiate before the Commission their criticism, the newspaper could not force them to do so.

We cannot enter into any discussion of the Commission at this stage, but, from a public point of view, it is interesting to note that our reports indicate that in many directions conditions at the Auckland Hospital have vastly improved since the articles were published. .These are matters that are outside the order of reference of the inquiry, which was confined to an examination of the building programme.