Australian Newspaper Correspondents on New Zealand Affairs.

Bruce Herald, Volume IX, Issue 893, 30 March 1877, Page 6

Australian Newspaper Correspondents on New Zealand Affairs.

~+ The Government organ at Wellington— a newspaper which, by the iuvariable Weakness of its arguments, and its indulgence in scurrility and abuse should cause tbe Ministry to exclaim, "Save me from my friends" — savagely assails the correspondents of some of the Australian papers for what it terms their wilful and wanton efforts to accomplish public mischief. Now, it strikes us forcibly, that if wanton and wilful mischief is done, it is done by those newspapers and correspondents who do not know what independence means, and who, in the most slavish and adulatory way. write up the Government whatever they may do. We do not palliate in any way tbe conduct of newspapers, or correspondents who take advantage of the opportunities of publicity at their disposal to villify personal character in a newspaper at a distance which cannot well be prosecute I, or to attack a public man in a way that, while not going within the boundary of the domain of libel, nevertheless deals with him unfairly and unjustly. Such conduct we should be the first to condemn. But we are glad that for many of the leading papers in different parts of the world there are New Zealand correspondents, men who have no desire to do injustice, and who criticise fearlessly the actiou of any ministry or minister. Executives that would be deaf to tbe voice of public opinion were it not that they feared tbe inevitable effect of ignoring it, dislike independent criticism appearing in print at a distauce even more than in the colony, knowing that matter so published affects tbe minds not only of thinking men in the other colonies or at home, as the case may be, but eventually conies under the notice of the reading public of New Zealand. We may say it is one of the greatest safeguards and one of the best guarantees of the efficient working of our administrative institutions that tbe Australian and British journals should have correspondents not afraid to speak their mind, and who show things, not as Ministers would have them seem, but as they really are.