Take-overs

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30952, 7 January 1966, Page 8

Take-overs

Sir, —After all the fuss about Lord Thomson’s bid for the “Dominion,” a fuss which ended in the passing of the News Media Act, we now find the Government, according to a report, willing to allow a much more important takeover. What they feared in the outside control of a newspaper will be accomplished much more effectively when the strongest advertising agency in America takes over the largest agency in New Zealand. Editorial policy of newspapers is as nothing to the subtle power of placing advertisement plus the patronising influence of side services such as news items and even editorials. Evidence of the latter came to light in the abdication crisia when

six widely-separated British provincial papers came out with identical editorials, the inference being that six editors were too lazy to paraphrase the material supplied. The Government has strained _at the Thompson gnat while preparing to swallow the advertising camel.— Yours, etc.,

W. B. BRAY. Leeston, February 6, 1966.

[We are not familiar with the case cited by Mr Bray; but we would think the more probable explanation is that the newspapers were commonly owned and were in fact merely expressing the considered opinion of their proprietors.— Ed., “The Press.”]

Sir, —Like the National Bank, the glassworks, and the Loan and Mercantile, Ltd., an advertising firm is going to overseas interests. These takeovers would not have occurred had the Government acted as it did over the “Dominion.” It rejected Mr Connelly’s bill which would have stopped this increasing drain on our loan-bolstered, time-payment-ridden, “steady-does-it” economy. This export of badly-needed capital is certainly a drain on our financial resources which resemble those of Mr Micawber, who, like Mr Holyoake, waits for something to turn up to ease his financial burdens.— Yours, etc., DISILLUSIONED NATIONALIST. January 5, 1966.