MISLEADING ADVERTISEMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9835, 18 September 1897, Page 9

MISLEADING ADVERTISEMENTS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir, —I note in your columns that the Victorian authorities have arrested a " fortune teller " on a charge of " false pretences." New Zealand is usually to the front, especially in experimental legislation, but in this instance it seems lamentably behind Victoria. Has it nevar struck you, Sir, that the many advertisements of marvellous cures and panaceas for " all the ills

that flash is heir to," which appear daily in the Ohriatchurch papers, come under the same category a3 the false pretences of the fortune teller.

No one would object to advertisements dealing with matters oi fact, but it is high time that some protest should be mado in regard to the advertisements and lavish printing of series of falsehoods, perpetrated with the intention of gulling the public in the interests of the advertiser.

One would like to fool that she newspapers afforded a truthful statement of facts convoying information and instruction, and that "As true as print" was still to bo relied upon. Of late, however, the saying has lost it 3 significance, and one has simply become disgusted and at some items, indeed, shocked at the sickening twaddle and claptrap nonsense he has to wade through, and which tend to throw discredit upon other parts of the reading matter. You and other editors cannot be held as altogether free from blamo in this, and I would appe.il to you to use your editorial scissors more freely in the matter of these advertisements.

The evil is a growing one, fraught with the gravest moral consequences to the public, and without some such steadying influence can only grow still more and finally call for legislation. —Yours, &c, Opiprk. [It would be manifestly impossible for any JCditor to hold himself responsible for statements made in advertisements, seeing that in the majority of cases he has no means of testing them. We exclude advertisements that are indecent, or that we know on positive evidence to be fraudulent. Beyond this it is very ditlicult to draw the line.— Ed. Piikss.]