Party ‘shut out’

Press, 4 May 1984, Page 20

Party ‘shut out’

PA Wellington The leader of the New Zealand Party, Mr Bob Jones, has said that he wanted an explanation from the Broadcasting Corporation on why his party had been “shut out” of television news.

The party expected to record a sizeable drop in the May ratings of the Heylen “Eye Witness” poll because television news was ignoring it, said Mr Jones at a meeting in Dannevirke.

Mr Jones said the New Zealand Party had been invited by television news and current affairs to comment on daily news items only twice in the last six months. One of these invitations had been for a comment on the party’s “predictable” decline in the April poll, he said.

“I say ‘predictable’ as the shut-out from television news lias focused attention on other political parties,” he said. “Our conference was the subject of the ‘Sunday’ programme in early March, yet the bulk of the programme was devoted to non-party people in a panel discussion considering the party.

“The party is now taking up this news shut-out with the chairman of Broadcasting, Mr lan Cross,” he said. “The imbalance by television news and current affairs programmes is undemocratic and unfair to the extent of making Labour-National polling support a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.