FREEDOM OF PRESS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 153, 31 May 1937, Page 2

FREEDOM OF PRESS.

NO INTERFERENCE. GOVERNMENT POLICY. A great deal had been made about the Labour Government's intention to curtail the freedom of the Press of New Zealand by a censorship, said the act-ing-Prime Minister (Hon. P. F raser) at Haivera on Tuesday night, states the Taranaki Herald. This was quite incorrect, as the Government had never considered such a step. The opinion that such a step might be taken, said' Mr Fraser, undoubtedly had spread from two injudicious attacks on the Press of the Dominion one over the air by Mr C. G. Scrimgeour. and the other in the Labour Party’s weekly, the Standard. The Minister said he did not think the broadcast attack should have lieen made, and he had made it his business to inquire into the article in the Labour Standard. This, lie stressed, was the opinion of one man, and a man not particularly in the Labour movement at that. Vlt was not the considered opinion of. either the Government or the Labour Party.

Mr Fraser said that at the next election the whole of the Press of New Zealand would be allied against the Labour Government. Jt was all very well to claim that the Press gave the Government members plenty of space. It did, particularly if in an unguarded moment a member of the Government made a remark that could be misconstrued. It then appeared in headlines in every daily newspaper in the country.