UNSAVOURY DETAILS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11685, 24 November 1923, Page 2

UNSAVOURY DETAILS

SUPREME COURT CASES EFFORT TO HAVE NEWSPAPER .REPORTS SUPPRESSED. LEGISLATION SUGGESTED. Per Press Association. OHR.I STGHURCH, November 23. Need few keeping unclean details out of newspaper reports of divorce and criminal eases was urged at to-day’s cession of the Presbyterian General Assembly, .when the following resolution proposed by the Ilev. J. Paterson, on behalf of the public queistdons committee, was carried unanimously: “Elat the Assembly approve the action of the committee regarding certain newspaper report®, and express the hope tnat Wgifilatson will be introduced to restrain newspapers from repeating unclean details in divorce and criminal oases, both in the interest of the reading public and of the many newspapers that refrain from so doing.” COMMITTEE’S REPORT. The report of the committee referred to the subject in the following terms: “Since the last Assembly the committee hae. put the Church in evidence in two questions of much moment. The first of these is in regard to the publication of largely unpursed reports m the newspapers of divorce court proceedings. The Press of the Dominion has in the past merited on the whole the epithet of ‘clean,’ but reoently ito columns have been soiled by filthy details of divorce cases, a grievous offence to decent minded adults, and a source of abominable contamination to the young. 'Hie evil came to a headl in connection with the peculiarly obnoxious trial in the Court at Wellington, when your committee voiced ite vigorous protest. This was published in the Wellington papers and a copy sent to the of the committee in each of the Presbyteries. You rcommittee further joined hands with the Wellington Ministers’ Association in a deputation t tf the Minister for Justioe, Stir Francis Bell, who promised to call the attention of the Legislature to the measure now under consideration in England for the repression of the same evil.

“SOME NEWSPAPERS NOT PARTICULAR.

“Unfortunately,” said the Rerv, Paterson, “there axe some newspapers in the Dominion that axe not too particular regarding the details they publish tf these divorce and criminal cases. The matter aan be looked at from three points of viesw; firstly, from the point of view of the newspapers themselves. The vast majority of the newspapers are not publishing, and have no desire to publish, unclean debaife of cases, and those newspapers need to be protected from other papers which publish the details. Secondly, we need to protect the readers. Young people axe urged hr read newspapers, and they must be protected from halving their minds defiled by recwKnlg this information.” Another matter that was often forgotten, Mr Paterson said, was that the relatives and perfectly innocent people were often pilloried through the detMls contained in newspaper reports. “It is time we made the newspapers realise they have no more right to spread scandal than anyone else,” declared Mr Paterson. “I think we should say-to those newspapers that justify _ themselves on the grounds that it is their business to disseminate news, that we will expect the same standard of morality and decency from newspapers as from individuals.” AN ALLEGED DANCER. Mr Paterson remarked that some tame ago he noticed a case where a woman had committed suicide in a certain way. The case was duly reported in all the newspapers, and in five or six months there were five or six similar cases. That, he said, wws an example ■of the danger of spreading certain information. There wan no need whatever to circulate such information, which was dangerous to certain types of neurotic persons. The tame had arrived when newspapers should be prevented by law from circulating reports that were injurious, defiling, and suggestive. . “We can be of one mind only in regard to this matter,” remarked the Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Gumming, s The motion' was oarried.