The Press MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1948. Newspapers and News

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25610, 27 September 1948, Page 6

The Press MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1948. Newspapers and News

| The president of the Newspaper ' Proprietors’ Association, in a statement reported on Saturday, dealt ! with a question very rightly I brought to its notice by the presii dent of the New Zealand Journal- | ists’ Association—that of tendi ency among local bodies to j restrict, or try to restrict, the legitii mate reporting of their proceedings. : The right of public bodies to ■ take business in committee—which j means that the press can take for ‘ publication only what the commiti tee later may formally report in i open meeting—is not questioned, | though the device is commonly i over-used and sometimes abused, j Two other practices are more • immediately condemned. The first, i increasingly common, is that of ! appealing to the reporters not to ; take this discussion or that stateI 1 ment from open meeting. These appeals are sometimes uttered as if they were meant as instructions, ■ and believed to be instructions properly given. They are not, of course; but it is only one degree worse to claim the right to forbid the reporter to take any part of open business than to appeal to him not to take it. His duty is to report, from open meeting, what his training and judgment tell him is news. If there is any special reason why an appeal against publication should be made—such as a member’s speaking in the belief that the meeting is in committee when it is not—it should be made to the reporter’s editor, not to the reporter. The second practice, not so common. among local authorities as among semi-public bodies, is that of excluding reporters and offering their papers reports prepared by the ■secretary or a publicity committee. Sometimes the object is to screen the wrangling and confusion of their meetings from view; sometimes those who favour the device fancy that it will help them to obtain fuller or better reports. The object, is mistaken; the fancy, a foolish one. The fact is that no body whose business is public, or which depends on public support in any way, has any good reason to avoid the normal processes of newspaper reporting and publicity or any-good right to try to restrict them. “The “Press” has not in the past much indulged the exponents of any of these news-shy practices. It will certainly not be more indulgent in future.