PRESS PRACTICES.

Northern Advocate, 18 June 1923, Page 4

PRESS PRACTICES.

Only academic interest attaches, presumably, to the proposal of a London printing trade union, mentioned in the cablegrams, that organised Labour should institute a censorship of the Press, owing to "gross misrepresentation" of the Labour side of the case in trade disputes. In spite of its debating society character, howevor, the proposal is interesting as an example of an astonishingly perverted outlook. On the whole the British newspaper Press, like that of New Zealand, endeavours to give fair publicity to the views of all. On the occasion of .my important dispute the Labour leaders concerned are always freely allowed to state their own case in the principal newspapers. This is the record and practice of the non-Labour British Press. Has anyone ever heard of a Labour newspaper giving publicity to any other views than those of its own party? Certainly in this country, and the position appears to be much the same in Great Britain, the Labour Press stands alone in being incurably one-eyed, and in refusing even a bare heading of ainy other group or section. It is because they fail consistently to "print all the news," or to escape from tho bondage of a pitifully narrow spirit of intolerance, that Labour newspapers in the vast majority of eases are feeble and sickly specimens of their kind. •