POLITICAL BROADCASTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 70, 20 February 1939, Page 7

POLITICAL BROADCASTS.

INNOVATION BY 8.8. C.

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Feb. 18

The British Broadcasting Corporation. announces an innovation by which the microphone will ho placed at the disposal of the three main political parties once a month for free discussion on some matter of current political interest.

The parties will select their own speakers and subjects shortly before each broadcast. Each debate will last for 45 minutes, and there will he in the studio on each occasion three speakers representing the different parties. The subject of the first debate will lie old-age pensions. This announcement lends interest lo facts disclosed in a Parliamentary answer yesterday regarding broadcasts by politicians. It has always been a recognised principle of British broadcasting that for speeches of a controversial character access to the microphone should be fairly divided between tin- Government and the Opposition parties, and the question was directed toward ascertaining if in practice the principle was being maintained. The answer showed that in the past year there had been 42 broadcasts by Alinisters of tho Crown, 48 by AT.P.’s supporting the Government, and 33 by Opposition members; hut the great majority of such broadcasts were of a non-political character. In the caso of Alinisters these were chiefly explanatory statements of legislative or administrative changes. Political addresses on party lines were confined to a balanced series of four broadcasts on the occasion of the Budget.