UNSAVOURY DETAILS

Southland Times, Issue 18965, 13 June 1923, Page 6

UNSAVOURY DETAILS

QUESTION OF PUBLICATION. DEPUTATION TO MINISTER. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, June 12. A deputation consisting of Archbishop O’Shea, Bishop Sprott, the Rev. Father Cullen and the Rev. R. Inglis, waited on the Minister of Justice to ask that a publication of details of divorce and other cases, bearing on sexual matters, should be forbidden. Reference was made by the Rev. Inglis (Presbyterian) to certain details pub* lished in connection with the Cooper case. He said that those associated with him maintained it was most undesirable that the prurient details of the evidence should be made puHic, in a way, that had been done in the Cooper case. Bishop Sprott joined the remarks of Mr Inglis. In the past, he said, the papers had been careful in what they published, and the press had been on a high plane. Certain evidence must be published, they agreed, but justice would not be prejudiced if the papers did not publish evidence regarding the details of irregular sexual intercourse. Judgment in the Cooper case would not have been different if the relations of parties had been perfectly regular, at least the speaker’s own judgment, was not affected by what had been published in the way of undesirable details in the Cooper case. The newspapers had got rather below their usual level, and he hoped something would be done to see that there was no recurrence. Archbishop O’Shea supported the remarks of the previous speakers and trusted that something would be done to restrict publication of details of evidence, which were considered to be undesirable. In reply to the deputation, Sir Francis Bell said that it was not his duty to protect the morals of the people, except through the police. In the matter of the kind under notice, there was difficulty to intervene by authority. Sir Francis said that if he were to grant the deputation's request, it practically meant the establishment of a censorship of the newspapers and he could see no way in which that could be done, legally and effectively.