BROADCAST BANNED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21844, 5 July 1934, Page 15

BROADCAST BANNED

CONTROVERSIAL MATTER UNIVERSITY STAFF MEMBERS BOARD'S ACTION CRITICISED Exception to the attitude of the New Zealand Broadcasting Board in banning talks prepared by them on the ground that they contain controversial matter is taken by Professor W. A. Scwell, professor of English, and Mr. H. D. Dickinson, exchange lecturer in economics, both of Auckland University College. The subject of Professor Sewell's lecture, which was to have been given this evening, was "Religion and Philosophy as Manifestations of the Spirit of Western Civilisation," but. the broadcasting board has decided that the copy of the talk showed it to be propaganda of a controversial nature. Professor Scwell, in an interview yesterday, admitted that there were two sentences containing personal references, which might have been deleted and which he would willingly have done. He claimed that the rest of the talk was completely fair, impartial and objective. An interpretation of facts was bound to be subject for debate, but, if he read the rules of the board rightly, statements merely controversial were not prohibited; they must also be propagandist. That was tho rule, not the practice. Mr. Dickinson said he had been asked to prepare for the same series on " Western Civilisation" three talks on " The Age of Machinery and the Great Society," "Marxism and the Idea of Equality," and " Fascism." The script of the first had been passed, but that of the second had been rejected after it had been submitted a second time with amendments. Since the talk on Fascism would have involved continuous references to that on Marxism, he had been quite unable to prepare any talk on Fascism.

In its original form, the talk that was rgjecte.d, said Mr. Dickinson, consisted " simply of a statement of the views held by Marxists on philosophy, history, sociology and politics and he had not asserted those views as true. In the amended script he had given several objections brought from both sides; in other caso3 he had left the last word to the critic. If it was the contention of the board that his matter was controversial, then it appeared that the subject of Marxism, so vital in European thought and politics,' could not be presented at all over the air to the people of New Zealand.