NEWSPAPER’S ROLE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11549, 28 January 1932, Page 3

NEWSPAPER’S ROLE

CIVILISING INFLUENCE

“Wo wore partly without newspapers during the week of the general strike oT the vear 1920, n, ’d most of us were like ships without charts or compasses,”, writes Air. Robert Gunn Davis in the “Scots Observer.”

“Some of ivs who ar ( > rather earefill students of affairs, felt ns a doctor would feel it he had to diagnose without his stethoscope. f A few weeks of that experience wou'd have nut us n.< much out of touch with the world as if wo lived in Greenland. The newspaper is one cf our greatest civilising influences. But it fs more. It is the greatest vehicle of culture, since it- reaches myriads of people who have neither the time nor the opportunity to read books. It is moreover, as important to the thinker as it. is to the artisan; to the laborer on the land as it is to the landowner; to the 'sailor on Hie sea as it is to the settler in remote parts. The newspaper has enabled millions to enjoy reading who, hut for it would have been all hut illiterate. . • “It has given them a glimmer °‘ what mental culture means, and some opportunity of developing that broad human spirit without which racial suspicion and class antagonism would be more acute and more devastating to civilisation 'than they are. It is better that people should vead than that they should not read. “If they read books as well as newspapers, so much the better, but even if they read nothing hut newspapers there is still some hope for their cultural emancipation. V' e must net underrate the value of contemplation of thp beauty of the land and the sea and the sky.

“We must not overlook the manifold advantages of looking at pe°' rdes, cf being humble patrons of the fine arts, painting, music, sculpture, the drama: hut "there is something still more potent in its influence on us, for it serves as a connecting link with all these. This is read, iug, without which all life would he J disconnected, unharmonious, reactionary, and in dancer of falling into decadence, in spite of all the arts. Greece and Rome and Carthage. and Mexico, and Peru, would probably have found it easier to resist the influences making for disintegration if the populace had been able to., read, and . if they had had newsnanors as wo know them.

“Criticism of the newspaper from whomsoever it comes js unjustified. Readme- is cur great means of contact with one another, and without .it,, in its most popular form, _we should he a prey to the reaction*? that destroyed some of tho earliest efforts of man towards civilisation.'’