POLITICS AND PUBLICITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25215, 3 May 1943, Page 2

POLITICS AND PUBLICITY

The complaints of the Labour Party about the obduracy of the press in failing to see the Socialist light are as old as the party itself, and as dull as most party propaganda. It is, however, a new failing, or a new phase of the newspapers’ chronic failure to be anything qther than what they are, which Labour is now discovering. Mr McCombs uncovered this fresh misdemeanour during his speech in the Address-in-Reply debate in March,, when he declared that the “ publicity for the war effort ” was “ falling down.” This sorry circumstance, Mr McCombs revealed, was not due to the Government, which had issued “a great deal of very good publicity,” but to the “ almost complete lack of co-operation of the daily newspapers,” which frequently did not print the material so generously supplied to them. When the space that is necessarily given to the war effort is taken into account, Mr McCombs’s suggestion that it is ignored by the press seemed surprising—as surprising, indeed, as the naive belief that the war effort cannot progress without “good publicity” prepared by the New Zealand Government. But the Labour Party at its conference in Wellington which has just ended has made the'cause of complaint clearer. Remits to the conference included proposals that the press should be “ compelled to reserve space for Government statements,” and that members of Parliament should be “ allowed ” to provide the Press Association with daily summaries of their speeches, for publication in the newspapers. In simple language, the suggestion was that the press should be forced to publish what the Government collectively, and what members of Parliament individually, want it to publish. Happily for the credit of the conference’s level of intelligence, the proposals were not accepted, it being recognised that “as the newspapers are privately owned ” there was no legal method of making them unpaid propaganda agencies for the Labour Party. To this gracious enunciation of a sad truth, conference added the recommendation that the Government should adopt other means to obtain newspaper space, and that members of Parliament should do likewise, This decision is sensible if enigmatic. Members of the Government should be fair enough to realise that the newspaper press is very willing and anxious to print official statements of public interest and information, and that it has, in fact, constantly complained that sufficient elucidatory material on the part taken by t New Zealand, in the war is not made available. Public guidance and en-

lightenment come too largely from unofficial and overseas sources. The Government should not need to be told that the responsibility for that is its own lack of communicativeness.. But the press is not primarily concerned with “ publicity,” whether for the war or for the Government. If the Labour Party wants that, then it must improve its own rather feeble publicity organ, not expect the independent press to act as its advertising agent. This must be stated bluntly, so that the order of intelligence responsible for these remits may comprehend it. The daily press, or that portion of it for which we can speak, does not believe the war effort can be greatly assisted nor the war wdn by official publicity, however “ good ” it may be, and especially publicity which is inspired by political considerations and the desire of politicians of any party for notoriety and selfglorification.