APPEAL TO PRESS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31221, 19 November 1966, Page 18

APPEAL TO PRESS

Less Sex And Scandal GV.Z. Press Assn.— Copyright! NEW DELHI, Nov. 15. The President of India, Mr Radhakrishnan, today appealed to the world press to avoid writing too many stories about sex, scandal and crime, and concentrate instead on social equality, world unity and peace. He was addressing newspaper editors and publishers from more than 20 countries at the opening session of the four-day International Press Institute conference here. “It is easy for us to stimulate the baser instincts of human nature, but it needs self-discipline to develop the higher instincts,” Mr Radharrishnan said.

Corruption in public life and insane acts of violence among young people should be fearlessly exposed, he said, but the press should also make a conscious effort to improve people’s standard of judgment on world issues. In particular, Mr Radhakrishnan said, newspapers “don’t communicate to their readers the dire consequences of any nuclear conflict.” The Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, told the assembly she believed in freedom of the press, but it did create problems.

She recalled Britain's press restrictions imposed during the Second World War and said that India was also at war—against poverty, backwardness, superstition and ignorance.

“On the result of this war depends our survival,” she said. India was in the middle of an industrial revolution, but the workers wanted more than they could be given. She said recent student riots in parts of India were partly encouraged by press reports of rioting in other places.