NOT SUITABLE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3150, 29 July 1942, Page 4

NOT SUITABLE

MORE CENSORSHIP URGED

BROADCASTING IN N.Z. APPEAL TO MR J. THORN, M.P. An appeal for some form of censorship over the broadcasting industry of New Zealand so that programmes not suitable for these trying days will not be put on the air is contained in the following letter to the Gazette. . The letterheads as under:— Sir, —On Monday night while listening to my.radio a feature called “Witches Tales” was broadcast by Station IZB. I have never yet heard such a depraved broadcast in my life and that any Government organisa-

tion such as the radio of New Zealand should be responsible for such a broadcast came as a shock to me. I am sure that none of the heads 1 of the Government of New Zealand have heard these dreadful stories or I am positive, they would have beep stopped ere this. I am writing to the Gazette in the hope that bur worthy member, Mr J. Thorn, will investigate the matter.

On Monday night the broadcast related an incident in which three American hoboes broke into an isolated American home and the woman shot herself to save herself from dreadful indignities. Before she shot herself she phoned her husband 50 miles away and her hysterical utterances while the men were breaking into the house were all broadcast. The scene then shifted to the husband coming out of hospital after a mental breakdown, swearing vengeance on his wife’s murderers.

The .final scene is a lawyer defending a hobo who had been charged with murdering another woman. The hobo is acquitted and the lawyer takes him home after the trial, gets him drunk and secures his confession, that he was the man who with two others had broken into the lonely house years ago.

The lawyer (who is the husband of the woman who shot herself) then wreaks his vengeance on the hobo, chaining him in a dark cellar and then fastens a cage with a live rat in it, over the hobo’s head so that the rat could gradually eat the chained man until he died. Again the horrible ravings of the dying man were broadcast. • iSurely such a feature is not fitting in these sad days when many women are living in homes by themselves and it is more than time that suitable censorship similar to that governing the film industry in this country is improsed upon all broadcasts. I sincerely hope that Mr Thorn will appreciate my viewpoint and take the matter up with the proper authorities.—l am, etc., FATHER. Paeroa, 24:7:42.