RIVAL TO PRESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23078, 1 July 1938, Page 8

RIVAL TO PRESS

MASS PKOPAGANDA / ' EVILS EMPHASISED PREJUDICE AND PASSION MR. ANTHONY EDEN'S VIEWS [from our own correspondent] LONDON. June 11 Mass propaganda could never easily succeed in Britain, the home of free and free criticism, and therefore the .home of journalism, Baid Mr. Anthony Eden, the former Foreign Secretary, at the annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund. "In an experience which covers several years and in the course of negotiations, some of which have not been unimportant, I have never known the confidence given to a journalist betrayed," said Mr. Eden. "Like a good many other things to-day, British journalism is on its trial. It has met a formidable rival in the organised'mass propaganda of the modern world. W© may dislike propaganda, but it would be foolish to under-rate its significance. "Mass propaganda or the mass production or opinion can do more to separate orte nation from another than any other factor. It can rouse prejudice and-passion, and, if pursued over a sufficiently long period of time, it can close the minds of its victims to all other points of view. I cannot believe that such propaganda methods could easily succeed in this home of journalism. "I should be the last to advocate any restriction of the right to free and fair criticism, but it should surely be exercised with a full sense of responsibility. What I do suggest is that in writing for our own people we should preserve a standard of intelligence, decency and self-respect which is not only due to our own people, but which will represent them abroad in a hotter and, I believe, a truer light, if we sometimes stop and think _of tho impression that cheap and irresponsible writing may produce elsewhere. "I am convinced that a free press is\a tremendous asset rather than a liability as compared with a controlled press. What matters most is that readers should know that they are not being artificially prevented from getting at the truth. "Democracy, whether in Parliament or in tho press, is the most difficult of all forms of government to practise, especially in a world where it has been largelj' abandoned. We lay bare to the world our weaknesses and defects in order that they may be remedied by the force of public opinion. "But it is surely wrong to wash dirty linen in public unless our object is to make it clean and unless we are prepared to make helpful suggestions as to how it should be made clean."