THE NEWS SERVICE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 47, 24 August 1911, Page 3

THE NEWS SERVICE.

PRESS ASSOCIATION CRITICISED DISCUSSION IN PARLIAMENT. The subject of the Press Association was discussed in, the House for a little while yesterday afternoon. Mt. Davey had asked the Government if it would this session set up a Select Committee to ascertain the methods adopted by the Pflesß Association in the distribution of hfews, especially in view of tha fact, that thff honourable member for Wellington South has declared that the Association is the tool of the Government? The reply given by the Acting-Primo Minister was as follows. :^-tf any such. Committee is set up it is quite certain that an enormous quantity of debatable matter will be brought forward-*«uch, for example, as the entrance fee charged to oountTy papers, the. relations of the Association with the Australian Associa* tion, the failure to send news by the Pacific cable, copyright of cabte news, etc. We are already Josing a largo sum annually on the distribution of press news, and the giving of any fur« ther concessions would increase the already considerable loss on the Telegraph branch of the service, tn any case the question will be very carefully considered. Mr. Davey, speaking to the reply, controverted the suggestion that the Press Association is the tool of the Government and ojave f-everal instances in which h© considered the Press Association had treated the Prime Minister ; ond the Hon. J. A. Millar had been badly treated by the Association, either through their utterances being omitted or through garbled reports being sent out. He also complained of the report sent out of Mr. Massey's meeting at Wellington, and asked generally whether that was fair treatment to be accorded to the politicians of New Zealand. Newspaper proprietors all over New Zealand were complaining, he declared, and in several cases they had justification. Mr. R. A. Wright also referred to the report sent out of Mr, Ma&sey'& Wellington meeting, and gave several other instances of what he considered unfair treatment. Mr. G. W. Russsll contended that if it was a fact that the country is losing a large sum of money annually in tho distribution of press news it was a very proper thing that the House should get up a committee of enquiry into the reason why the money was being Itjkl and put into the pockets of the- news paper proprietors. Also he expressed the opinion t<hat reports of meeting* were coloured by the political bias of the newspapers that sent them out. The Press Association, he urged, ought v, be able to pfovidfc for the sending out of independent reports. Mr. Anderson considered that any newspaper reporter ought to be able to send out an impartial report. The profits of the Press Association were not so very extraordinary and the money they had in hand was not so great, consider* ing the time the Association had been working. Mr. Jennings : Have you eeen the balance sheet? Mr, Anderson : Yes. U would, he atldod, be impracticable .to provide a

Epecial man in do ail til© reporting of the Association. Ths Hon. T. Mackenzie remarked thai out of fifty-seven inches of Mr. Massey's speeches which had appeared in Hansard, twenty-gix inches appeared in the Otago Daily Times, and out of three hundred and eighty-five inches delivered by members c» f the Government only twenty -three inches appeared in tho same pa-per.