RUMOUR AND THE CITIZEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24555, 10 April 1943, Page 6

RUMOUR AND THE CITIZEN

The rehuke to rumour-mongers issued by the Commissioner of Police is sound in all essentials. Everyone knows how stories, based on the flimsiest evidence, or no evidence at all, can spread, gathering detail as they go, and how some of those who pass them on are prepared to swear solemnly to the truth of assertions for which they have not a shred of proof. Sometimes the tales are merely grotesque in their wild improbability, but sometimes they are full of mischievous possibilities. Most of those affecting the men, and women, of the services fall into the second category, for they may add to the anxieties of parents and other kinsfolk already under quite sufficient strain. Mr. Cummings said he could not understand how_ wild rumours about the street disturbance to which he referred had become current. The explanation is very simple—they were bred by official suppression of the facts. If the plain and straightforward account of what actually happened, now given by the commissioner, had been made public at the time, there would have been no scope for the distorted versions of which he complains. He may not have been responsible for the original suppression. Probably he was not, for as an experienced police officer he doubtless realises the sterilising effect on rumour of the plain truth. Thus he would be better occupied in representing to the proper authorities the result of denying publicity to facts which could not possibly affect national security, than in reproaching the public for trying to fill the void needless censorship creates.