Media image of N.Z. 'depressing’

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 1

Media image of N.Z. 'depressing’

OLIVER RIDDELL

By

Journalists have been criticised by the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, for picturing New Zealand as a depressed and divided land and people. He told the Auckland School of Journalism yesterday that he found this tendency increasingly alarming. Journalists used a powerful medium. A visitor forming a picture of the country from what appeared in the news media

would be inclined to see it as a depressed and divided land and people. , That was not so, Mr Lange said. It was a land of challenge and opportunity, and in any international comparison its standards of equity and justice ranked very well. New Zealand had been called the most literate country in the world; it had a free press and free speech, freedoms which were taken for granted and had to be guarded. “As Judge Eddie Durie said on tele-

vision last Sunday, the Waitangi Tribunal is an indication of how well our race relations are working — not, as is usually portrayed, a symbol of doom and gloom and racial explosion,” he said. '“I am not denying there are differences and difficulties, and there is a need for a vigorous and informed debate. “But what I . am talking about is a constant attitude, a pessimistic frame of mind which because it always assumes the worst becomes self-perpetuating,” Mr Lange said.