Newspapers Assessed By High School

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 18

Newspapers Assessed By High School

“In these days of intense competition from radio and television, we feel that the newspapers could well make their main task that of clarifying and making sense of the chaotic jumble of news which comes pouring in from abroad,” says a high school report on the overseas news content of 34 New Zealand daily newspapers.

The school is Kaikorai Valley High School, Dunedin, where a top fifth form class has made a statistical and qualitative study of cable news in New Zealand dailies for the week beginning September 21 last year. A broader study of New Zealand newspapers, made by the same school three years ago, attracted considerable attention.

“In New Zealand,” says the report, ‘foreign news too often seems to be regarded by the newspapers as a commodity to fill up gaps with, without regard for relevance or continuity.” It says there is room for improvement in the selection and presentation of foreign news in New Zealand. Some newspapers set aside a specific page for overseas news, and the investigators preferred the convenience of that system, with some reservations. Staff Abroad

The New Zealand Press Association is criticised for having too few overseas correspondents of its own—“far fewer in number than the foreign staff of some quite moderate-size dailies in other countries.

“The Manchester ‘Guardian’ for example, whose circulation is less than that of the ‘New Zealand Herald,’ has more correspondents abroad than the N.Z.P.A. and all the New Zealand dailies put together.” It says that since the N.Z.P.A. rules were relaxed, allowing member newspapers to employ their own staff overseas, no newspaper, so far as could be ascertained, had set up a permanent bureau outside the country. “New Zealand reporters travel overseas only on sports tours or as guests of a public foundation; their employers don’t appear to think that foreign news is worth spending much money on . . . “It follows that very little of the foreign news published in New Zealand is written by, or from the point of view of, New Zealanders. Much of it in fact shows signs of its Australian Associated Press origin ... Our first major criticism of the foreign news coverage of New Zealand newspapers is that there is too much ‘foreignness* about it, that events and trends are not

seen and explained from a New Zealand point of view.” “Signs Of Hostility” The report said that the news read during the survey sometimes showed, for example, signs of hostility to Chinese, Indonesians, Egyptians and French people and policies, “a hostility that New Zealanders need not logically share in all cases.” It also suggested that some newspapers could well leave out some of the lesser Australian and American items to make room for more news from the less well-covered areas of the world. Weak spots in New Zealand coverage of world news (using the “International Herald Tribune,” published in Paris, as a comparison) seemed to be Latin America, Greece-Cyprus-Turkey, Europe generally, and Communist Europe in particular. Newspapers were criticised for failing to follow up stories, and the apparent inability of some to seize on a story of genuine New Zealand interest “It would not be fair to close,” says the report, “without noting that the average New Zealand newspaper reader gets far more overseas news than his Australian or American counterpart.”

On the basis of overseas news, nine newspapers are rated as giving “excellent coverage," eight as being in the second rank, 10 in the third rank, and seven in the fourth. The metropolitan dailies are placed in the “excellent” class, except for one in the second rank and two in the third.