Admission of errors pays— Sir Alfred

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34129, 15 April 1976, Page 12

Admission of errors pays— Sir Alfred

(N Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 14. Three years experience as the chairman of the Press Council had persuaded Sir Alfred North that a ready acknowledgement of error on th; part of a newspaper — where error is shown to exist — will often be enough to dispose of a complaint at an early stage Sir Alfred says in his foreword to the Press Council’s third annual report that nothing is more disarming than a generous acknowledgement of this type.

On the whole the council’s findings had been received in good part by the industry and journalists — “and, I hope, by complainants as well,” said Sir Alfred.

The council was not called upon to consider quite as many complaints in 1975 as during the previous year, but the more complicated nature of some of them was time consuming and demanded a good deal of consideration. EDITOR’S CRITICISM The only serious criticism the council received came from the editor of a weekly newspaper. He described as ill-considered and unfair the way the council had dealt with a complaint by the National Council of Women that the treatment of sex and related topics by some weekly newspapers showed undesirable trends, harmful, the women felt, to the best interests of young people into whose homes such papers regularly came. Sir Alfred said it might have been unfair in the eyes of some, but it certainly was not ill considered, for the council set up a sub-com-mittee to study the many clippings sent to it by the women’s organisation, in the light of its 1973 publication, “An Appraisal of Sex, Nudity, and Related Topics in the New Zealand Press.” The sub-committee’s report was then circulated to all the other members of the council, and received their approval.

Skateboards.— The Ministry of Transport has no control over the use of skateboards, according to the Ministry’s officer at Mount Maunganui, Mr R. N. C. Johnstone. He had been asked by the Mt Maunganui Borough Council to report on the control of skateboards. — (P.A.).