AN UNWISE PROPOSAL

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 213, 2 June 1908, Page 6

AN UNWISE PROPOSAL

.. The Pkime Minister has,' after all, decided to co-operate with the Commonwealth in subsidising the 'London Standard's ingenious attempt to further its ends by foisting itself upon the British public as the London voice of Australasian public opinion. The proprietors of the Standard are very enterprising people, and their new " Empire Supplement " is a first-class journalistic coup; but that is not a question that concerns the 'New Zealand public. . What docs concern the public is' the very obvious fact that the. Standard is using the Government and the Dominion for its own purposes, and at the Dominion's expense. The Prime Minister has' already subsidised a nows; system through Router, which is a thing bad in i principle. If Sir Joseph Ward did not know, he should have informed himself, that the British Press has already the means of getting all the Australasian news, worth printing, and that the London papers require no inducement to print whatever, in the judgment of the experienced journalists controlling them; is likely to interest , their readers. Anyone, then, can calculate for himself tho value to New Zealand of the scraps of New Zealand news that would not: be cabled Home unless, like advertisements, they are paid for by the State. That Schcme is a silly one, biit it is, at any. rate, nothing worsu than a simple waste of money. The subvention to the Standard is a much more objectionable idea. The Commonwealth Government, has taken a page of advertising space on the condition that the Standard prints a cable messago of 500 words once a week. The New Zealand, arrangement appears to be a similar one, and the offor of the Standard to print New Zealand news is the bait that has landed our usually wide-awake Prime Minister. Of courso, the arrangement suits the newspaper in question admirably, and the supplement, projected in the sacrcd, name' of '-Empire, will dohbtless pay But will it pay New. Zealand ? What; can New Zealand gain froni what, as the Melbourne Argus pointed out in denouncing the Commonwealth subvention, is " the publication of weekly doses of dull news in a single London newspaper of limited circulation 1 " Plainly, little. Viewed merely as < a business proposition, the scheme stands condemned. New Zealand should certainly be advertised at Homo, but it should be advertised intelligently. There is another aspect of the matter, however, and a serious one. We have in previous articles pointed out the political* danger of singling out one newspaper, and that paper a very prince among partisans, for the bestowal of an exclusive bounty that will be interpreted by many as an approval of the doctrines preached in its columns. The more one considers the matter,-the more completely does Sir Joseph Ward appear to have fallen; a victim to, journalistic astuteness. The Standard will no doubt claim, by-virtue of its State subsidies, to voice colonial opinion. This is especially undesirable in the. case of the Standard, which has -k<> misunderstood colonial opinion in its advocacy of tariff reform, by picturing it as rosentful of Britain's adherence 10 Free Trade, as to make,the colonies almost objects of dislike ftnd distrust to a section of British Free Traders, to a great part, that is to say, of .the British people. We recently noted Sir Joseph Ward's regrettable departure from his previously correct attitude on fiscal reform. Since then ho hds repeated his mischievous words in strongerv terms at Eltham, where he actually hectored Canada over the Franco-Canadian treaty. Wo can guess now that Sir Joseph was talking with an eye to having his views printed in the Standard. Those views are quite opposed, to public opinion in this country, but they will enable the Standard simultaneously to extol its enterpri.se, to make the claim we have referred to, and -possibly, in so doing, to injure the cause of the colonies. On every ground, therefore, the Prime Minister's amusing capture by an astute journal ,is to be condemned by the people who pay the expenses while the StAndard gets the prestige and the Prime Minister his little publicity.