Texas protest

Press, 5 August 1983, Page 16

Texas protest

Sir,—Tut, tut. Your bias is showing. Your front page headline (August 3), read: “Auckland protests take ugly turn,” and headed an article on demonstrations at the arrival of the U.S.S. Texas. In the article I expected to read the usual condemnation of the excesses of the “nasty protesters.” Instead, I discovered the “ugly turn” was someone driving his or her car into a group of protesters, knocking one man and his baby daughter on to the car bonnet. Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been, “Car driven into protesters.” The headline you used was most misleading, positioned as it was beside a photograph of a protest boat under the bow of the U.S.S. Texas. Considering that the police officer in charge of the harbour protest described the protesters as “very good and very responsible” (“The Press,” August 3), the headline obviously could not apply to the protesters’ actions. Such misleading journalism is not to be expected from the newspaper described by Mr Muldoon as “the best in New Zealand”—or is it?—Yours, etc., D. L. JACKSON. August 3, 1983.

[The headline referred to the protests as an event, not to the protesters, who themselves would probably agree that the occasion took an ugly turn. Nevertheless, the possible misreading is regretted.— Editor.]