"Bulletin” Columnist Attacks News Bill

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 3

"Bulletin” Columnist Attacks News Bill

« (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright/ SYDNEY, Nov. 4. Lord Thomson of Fleet now had something in common with Miss Mandy Rice-Davies—he was being shut out of NewZealand. Writing in this week’s edition of the "Bulletin,” Maurice Shadbolt in his New Zealand newsletter says this is the effect of the News Media Bill.

“The Bill has been rushed recklessly into law here in one of the most remarkable and rowdy episodes in 100 years of Parliamentary Government,” he writes.

“Unashamedly designed to protect the country’s eight proGovernment metropolitan newspapers from overseas competition, the Bill has been under heavy fire from the New Zealand Journalists’ Association, the legal profession, the printing trades unions, the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, many small newspapers and branches of the governing National Party itself. “All to no effect: Prime Minister Keith Holyoake announced, even while the Statutes Revision Committee was hearing submissions, that he had no intention of holding the bill back. “One Wellington story has it that the Prime Minister’s anxiety to push the bill through at all costs stems directly from a blazing row he had with Lord Thomson during the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference in London last June,” said the writer.

‘SELF-CONGRATULATION’ Introduction of the News Media Bill in Parliament had coincided with an orgy of selfcongratulation on the part of New Zealand’s metropolitan press, said Shadbolt. “Much of this came oddly from newspapers which are normally in favour of outside competition for all other New Zealand-owned Industry.”

In his article the writer says the short comings of New Zealand's non-competitive press had become increasingly obvious over the last 10 years. “No individual New Zealand newspaper has—or is permitted to have, under joint agreement—a permanent representative cabling back reports from outside the country. “A tiny provincial newspaper was collectively reprimanded two or three years ago for attempting to contact Khrushchev—by telephone—on its own initiative. "The New Zealand press as a whole (through the New Zealand Press Association, which is serviced solely by Reuters) has no full-time man in Washington, London, Moscow, Europe or Asia. “Even in neighbouring Australia, coverage from a New Zealand angle comes through Reuters men for whom this country is a part-time concern. as is the case in London.” STARVATION That New Zealand was often “literally starved for adequate coverage of the outside world” was suggested by a fantastic demand for news weeklies, he said. “If the shortcomings ended there, that might be sad enough—it might all be explained by this country’s insularity. But apathy and lack of competition is reflected in domestic events,

too—fire, accident and Court news apart. “An explosive domestic story sometimes goes begging on the door of newspaper offices without effect.” In only the field of sport, horse racing in particular, did the New Zealand press excel itself. "The characteristic New Zealand journalist has the capacity to string together a competent Court report, but rarely has a chance for anything more ambitious. If he stays long enough in journalism ambition will soon dry up with initiative." "MENTAL LETHARGY” If he had stayed long enough in the profession the distinguishing characteristic of the New Zealand newspaperman would be mental lethargy. At the end of his article Shadbolt, returning to the News Media Bill writes: “When the bill made its premature reappearance in Parliament, Labour opposition, earlier faint-hearted, was in full cry. Clearly the bill has given Labour its first major tactical advantage in Parliament for a year and. if it chooses to ride the current of opinion in the country, repeal of the bill could well be an election issue in 1966. “In those circumstances. New Zealand's daily press could easily be in the situation journalists have officially predicted: being forced to oblige the government of the day, or else.”