“Like A Town Board Meeting”

Northern Advocate, 30 July 1938, Page 10

“Like A Town Board Meeting”

[Per Press AssocMiion. Copyright .] WELLINGTON, This Day. The opinion that listening to Parliament in New Zealand was like listenj ing to speakers at a town beard meeting in a town in the United States was expressed by Dr. W. Horton, Professor of Dogmatics at the Graduate School of Theology. Overlin, Ohio, United States, in an interview. Dr. Horton criticised the breadcasting of Parliamentary debates. A striking feature of the Parliamentary debates to which he had listened in the House of Representatives recently was the neighbourly feeling so evident among the speakers. There was no great difference between the speakers, and everyone gave the impression that he was doing his bit to co-operate with the others. Everybody seemed to know everything about everyone else. The danger of broadcasting Parliamentary speeches, he said, lay m the fact that, rather than keep to the subject of the debate, speakers would tend to include in their speeches propaganda for the benefit of members of their constituencies. This had happened in America, where all Congress speeches were carefully reported and circulated among electors. The House of Representatives in New Zealand was small, whereas in America it was so large that a system of broadcasting had had to be installed before a speaker could be heard in all parts of the building. Congressmen there were always engaged in seme form of work, and did not pay much attention to the speakers.