Broadcasting in Decline

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22876, 24 November 1939, Page 8

Broadcasting in Decline

The complaint made by the executive of the North Canterbury branch of the Farmers’ Union against recent broadcast criticisms of the union by the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting might be enlarged into a general complaint against the administration of New Zealand’s broadcasting services in the last few months. About a fortnight before the outbreak of war, the National Broadcasting Service came under a severe censorship of news and opinions. The ordinary news broadcasts were completelyeliminated and rebroadcasts from Daventry substituted. At the same time, all talks on international questions or on subjects bearing even remotely on the present international situation were discontinued. Discussion of national questions, never very free or lively, has also ceased. Whether these drastic restrictions are desirable or necessary is beside the main point, which is that, if the Government did regard them as desirable and necessary, it ought to have applied them impartially. Not fpr the first time, however, the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting has followed his own policy. He appears to have established a right to say what he pleases on any subject, with the qualification that what he pleases to say invariably fits in with the policy of the Government. The restrictions on the freedom of the National Broadcasting Service have also been accompanied by a rapid increase in the amount of programme time given to Ministers of the Crown. In time of war, this is possibly justifiable. But what makes it a somewhat disquieting development is that it is paralleled by a decline in non-official broadcast discussion of social, economic, and political questions. By degrees, broadcasting in New Zealand is being transformed from an instrument of public enlightenment to an instrument of official propaganda.