MASS PROPAGANDA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 20

MASS PROPAGANDA

VIEWS OF ANTHONY EDEN CAUSE OF PREJUDICE AND PASSION (From Our Own Correspono£nt) (By Air Mail) LONDON, May 14. Mass propaganda could never easily succeed in Britain, the home of free speech and free criticism, and therefore the home of journalism, said Mr Anthony Eden,* former Foreign Secretary, at the annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund this week. “In an experience which covers several years and in the course of negotiations, some of v/hich 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, We may, dislike propaganda, but it would be foolish to under-rate its significance. “Mass propaganda or the mass production of opinion can do more to separate one 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. SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY “ 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 better and, I believe, a truer light if we sometimes stop and think of the 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 the press, is the most difficult of all forms of Government to practise, especially in a world where it has been largely abandoned. Wc 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.”