EXCLUSION OF PRESS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23804, 25 November 1942, Page 4

EXCLUSION OF PRESS

* PRODUCTION COUNCIL MEETING REQUEST MADE BY MINISTER Press reporters were excluded from a special meeting of the North Canterbury District Council of Primary Production yesterday at the request of the Minister of Primary Production for War Purposes (the Hon. J. G. Barclay). The Minister, who was making his first official visit to the council, said he preferred to carry on the meetings without the press. The council then went into committee, but at a further request from the Minister the reporters were asked to leave. Mr Barclay said that quite a controversy had sprung up here as to whether the press should be admitted to council meetings. The majority of the councils throughout the Dominion did not have the press at their meetings. It was a debatable question whether the press should be at meetings or not, and there was something to he said on both sides. “But considering the little war that seems to have sprung up in Christchurch over this question, we have one big war on our hands, and we can’t afford to have a lot of little wars at the present time,” said Mr Barclay. “This little war is just an illustration of what might happen if the press ar£ permitted to attend primary production council meetings. “I have nothing against the press,” continued Mr Barclay. "Generally speaking they have been most fair to me, and they always put in or keep out of their papers just what we ask them. Lots of things crop up of a private nature, however, at a primary production council, which is a semi-State department to-day, and I think we are much freer to criticise one another or the department and the Minister if the press are not present. We are bound to have a difference of opinion, but the press are apt to build it up as a case of disunity between the Minister, the department, and the National Council. We don’t think of having the press at the National Council in Wellington, and we don’t have it at departmental conferences. “We want to iron out our differences and talk them over. We don’t want them magnified into differences between the Minister and the National Council. There is a lot to be said on the question that the press should not be at meetings. The chairman and the secretary are here and they can give statements to the press and take responsibility for what goes in. If you want publicity you can give it to the press and you get what you want." Mr Barclay added that sometimes correspondence from outside slipped through and made good reading in the newspapers, but it did not create unity. “We are out to create unity at present, not disunity,” he said. “All things considered, I prefer to carry on meetings without the press.”