POLITICIANS AND PRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 100, 29 April 1937, Page 6

POLITICIANS AND PRESS.

I Another member of the Government Party launched an attack on the metropolitan Press of this country. Mr. A. F. Moncur, in an address at Putaruru, said that these dailies could never find anything right with the Lalwur Government, and advised his hearers not to let their arguments have any influence upon them. This appeal to blind faith and suggestion that nothing the Labour Party conceives can be open even to argument is characteristic, but it is not likely to be met with much acceptance. If Mr. Moncur has read the newspapers he criticised, he must know that he has deliberately misrepresented them, for every newspaper in ITew Zealand

has favourably commented upon some phases of the Government's programme. Every Government, in the past has had sterner criticism than the Labour Government of its legislative and administrative act?, butj the criticism has been accepted in the! spirit in which it was made, not as a cause] for resentment and vituperation. If, 011 the other hand, Mr. Moncur has not read the newspapers, and is not aware of the facts, he has no right to give expression to illfounded attacks. His statement that the Government is going to rely upon broadcasting, and that any public man could speak direct to the people by this medium would be reassuring if Mi - . Moncur had any authority to make it. In broadcasts of Parliament both sides have been heard, but is Mi - . Moncur able to give a. guarantee that propaganda favourable to his own party will not emanate from the" commercial stations, or that, if it does, the opponents of his party will have the right of reply? It is interesting to note that Mr. Moncur's next-door neighbour, Mr. ITulquist, member for (he Bay of Plenty, recently said that he felt compelled to dissociate himself from attacks on the Press, that he had no reason to complain, and that all the representatives of newspapers with whom he had. come into contact had treated him 1 fairly.