CONTROL OF RADIO BROADCASTING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 14 July 1938, Page 10

CONTROL OF RADIO BROADCASTING

j SHOULD BE INDEPENDENT OF GOVERNMENT VIEWS OF FARMERS’ UNION PRESIDENT “To-day freedom of the air is an integral pait of free speech,” said the Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, Mr W. W. Mulholland, when urging, in his address to the union u*i its annual conference in Wellington yesterday, that broadcasting should be ecu trolled by an officer or board, responsible only to Parliament and as independent of the Government as the judiciary. “As instancing the importance attached t*i statements by the Farmers’ Union,” said Mr Mulholland, “I might mention the evidence submitted to the Parliamentary Committee on the social security schemes, winch was considered of such importance by the Government that the Prime Minister thought it necessary, in the 7 o’clock wireless broadcast from Ins department on the evening of the day foilownig the delivery of our evidence, to broadcast a considerable part of Mr James Robert’s evidence. 'This evidence was a series of elogiums which were duly responded to by the Prime Minister and other members of the Parliamentary Committee, who, in their turn, congratulated Mr Roberts on his excellent evidence, all of which was broadcast as news. “This incident is only one of many that proves the undesirability of Ministerial control of broadcasting. Parliament should lay down certain definite principles i and give the administration of them to i an officer or board responsible only to Parliament and as independent of the Government as the judiciary.”