Mr Skinner Sees Bias In Reports

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31319, 15 March 1967, Page 1

Mr Skinner Sees Bias In Reports

Newspaper reports of his addresses to mass protest meetings in Auckland and Dunedin on the rising cost of living were criticised by the president of the Federation of Labour (Mr T. E. Skinner) on his arrival in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr Skinner will speak at Latimer square at 10 a.m. today at the third protest meeting of workers this week. Mr Skinner said the newspapers had left out the criticisms in their reports of his addresses. The press had adopted its usual conservative line. No report he had read was unbiased. All had been biased towards the Government.

Mr Skinner said he was very pleased with a 22,000 attendance at the Auckland meeting and 4000 at Dunedin. Attendances had been beyond all expectations.

Mr Skinner said that over the years he had made statements on the economic situation. Sometimes they were printed, sometimes they were not. Sometimes they were mutilated. The press printed only what it wanted to print. This was general. Mr Skinner said that this was one reason for the stopwork meetings. “We can’t get to our members in any other way,” he said. “We have no unlimited time on the air or television. We have no unlimited space in the newspapers.” Mr Skinner said that immidiately the federation did something to protect its members it was “playing politics.”

“But because we don’t agree with the legislation of the Government, because we don’t think it will put any more money in our overseas funds, because we wish to protect the interests of our members, then we are ‘irresponsible.’ and ‘not acting in the interests of the country’.” Mr Skinner said that if any workers were victimised by their employers for taking part in any of the stop-work meetings in the four main centres, the federation would protect them. Mr Skinner said there was nothing in the federation’s

proposals to improve the country’s economic situation that would cost the nation as much as the present policy would.

When asked whether the F.O.L. was creating a policy that the Labour Party would have to follow, Mr Skinner said: “Whether the Labour Party does or doesn’t follow is a matter for the Labour Party. The reason for the action of the F.O.L. is to protect our own members.”