WHAT IS NEWS?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23685, 17 December 1938, Page 14

WHAT IS NEWS?

It is an interesting, though it cannot be described as a very serious, question which members of the Wellington Fire Board raised yesterday when they deprecated the publicity given by the* press of New Zealand to earthquakes. Any responsible t press has a duty to its readers, who are, after all, its customers, to provide them with the news for which they pay. And while the newspaper stands in a somewhat different relation to its subscribers from that of, say, the purveyor of shoes or vegetables to his patrons, its contract with them requires that, if it is honest, it will supply them with news. If a newspaper should attempt to discriminate between good and bad news, its customers would be the first to object, and faith in it could not be sustained. This premise is so unassailable that it is difficult to determine what the complaint of the Wellington Fire Board really is. Can it seriously be suggested that the newspapers should abstain, or should be restrained, from reporting that an earthquake was experienced in the southern portion of the North Island this week? And if such a suggestion were entertained, would the public be grateful? The

answer is that the people of New Zealand, who are accustomed to learning the truth in their newspapers, would be indignant in the extreme. Nor could they be blamed for their resentment at an attempt to conceal an occurrence about which, however unfortunate it may be, they are entitled to be afforded information. It is not human nature —it is certainly not in the nature of the average New Zealander, who prides himself upon his knowledge of what is happening in the world—' to submit to the deliberate withholding of information about occurrences that concern the public, distasteful though it may be. If the function of the newspaper were limited, like that of the sundial, to recording only sunny hours, it could not long remain a newspaper at all. The claim of members of the Wellington Fire Board that "publicity" is given to earthquakes is the only point in their discussion which actually is worthy of notice at all. Their complaint appears to be that the reporting of earthquakes does not dd the Dominion any gcod. Neither, for that matter, do earthquakes. But the same might be said of many happenings, including fires, and the press is considerably less equipped to prevent earthquakes than a Fire Board is to prevent fires. It can only record them, as plainly and accurately as possible, as occurrences abdut Which the public is entitled to receive information. That the newspapers report also what the members of the Wellington Fire Board choose to say, quite irrelevantly, about indicates that they interpret their function of newsgiving in a generous sense.