THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1936. BROADCASTING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22903, 10 June 1936, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1936. BROADCASTING

We Lave said on previous occasions that a decision to bring radio broadcasting in New Zealand under inflexible political control would be likely to create opportunities for the improper use of what should be a public amenity in the widest and Lest sense of the term. The Government now states in the plainest language that it intends that the broadcasting service shall be used in part for the dissemination of propaganda in its own interests. The service, which is essentially a national one, is to be openly prostituted to the furtherance of (he aims of a political party. The Broadcasting Bill now before the House of Representatives is designed to give the Government absolute power not only to dictate policy but also to control administration. Propaganda broadcasts arc justified by the Prime Minister on the stupid grounds that the Government has a duty “not to keep the people in the dark ” and that what the newspapers neglect to do the broadcasting service must be made to do. The inference is that the newspapers have not seen fit to acclaim Labour politicians as the infallible authors of an inspired policy for the good government of the Dominion. When this Bill becomes law, the ease of New Zealand, in the matter of broadcasting control, will be without parallel in any other country, the nearest approach to it being found in those dictatorridden countries where a rigid censorship determines how much the public shall know and what shall go over the air and be otherwise circulated. British experience, upon which the New Zealand broadcasting service was originally modelled, is to he ignored. British practice, reaffirmed in the recentlypublished report of a Select Committee, is to insist, as far as pos-iblc,

on the freedom of broadcasting management from political control and commercial influence. The right of the Government to have ultimate control over broad issues of policy is admitted in Great Britain, as it always has been here, but it is underlined in British policy that the 8.8. C. shall be allowed freedom in the ordering of its domestic affairs and in the details of management. With the abolition of the Broadcasting Board and the appointment of a Director who will be “under the direct control of the Minister,” the last vestige of freedom will have been removed from the system which, in spite of its shortcomings, has served this country well. It is difficult to discover what public demand, if any, there has been for such radical policy changes as the Government proposes. Complaints there have been in plenty of faults in past administrations, but it does not follow that weaknesses will disappear miraculously when the Minister and his chief executive have relieved the Board of its functions. The Government is making a fetish of Cabinet responsibility. In this case, however, there will be more than a suspicion that it has a high appreciation of the effectiveness of the weapon it proposes to employ in its own service. The official calculation is that in New Zealand every other house is equipped with a radio receiving set, the number of licence-holders on December 31 last being approximately 184.000. 'flic Government assumes that political control of the service is the desire of one and all. It obviously takes the view that these tens of thousands of listeners are eager to listen to propaganda broadcasts, because, it is pretended, the newspaper press does not keep them intelligently informed of Parliamentary proceedings. Fortunately there are difficulties in the way of the Government’s carrying its reasoning to a logical conclusion by making it mandatory on listeners to select politics when they are choosing their radio entertainment. The general provisions of the Bill have been clearly set out in our columns. Regardless of the burden imposed on our space, we have given full details of it as well as of all the other Ministerial proposals. We have been under no temptation to “ distort or suppress,” as one of the least responsible of the members of the Government’s following imputes to newspapers as their practice. B stations, previously classed as unofficial. are to he kept functioning, according to promise, by subsidies payable out of licence foes. From the radio blight of commercial stations the Dominion is to be free no longer. The B stations are not to be allowed to retail sponsored programmes. The socalled, commercial stations are to be operated by the Government itself, and if the subsidy cost begins to press heavily on the revenue fund it will not be surprising if the blight spreads over a wider area than is to be covered at first by these stations. Parliamentary broadcasts are to continue, and will presumably be maintained on the present inequitable basis of selection of speakers. And listeners as a whole will lie expected to contribute to the maintenance of a service which is apparently designed to benefit political interests first, private B station interests second, with listeners themselves running a bad third.