NEWSPAPER CONTROVERSY.

Southland Times, Issue 21265, 11 December 1930, Page 9

NEWSPAPER CONTROVERSY.

,To the Editor.

Sir, —I sincerely thank you for myself and many others for having conclusively proved that a religious controversy can be brought to finality in the daily Press. Previous experience has shown how necessary it is to carefully define the order of reference and to limit it to matters of fact so that ordinary readers may finally judge just as an ordinary jury, can sufficiently consider and give a verdict on questions of fact. Moreover previous experience has shown how necessary it is to prevent a witness under gross-examination from answering one question by asking another and from making statements totally independent of the issue. I hold strongly that there are a large number of readers of a daily paper who would welcome the discussion of religious matters under such careful supervision as you have given. .Such supervision no doubt entails considerable trouble but it has the advantage of preventing much that might tend to discourtesy and irritation in the warfare of the correspondence column, as well as of giving the editor a. control that can be exercised without any seeming harshness. By this method the inconclusiveness of the debate is avoided, for the debate does no more than indicate the strength or weakness of particular points and give information for the development of one’s case whether in argument or defence. I have heard a case strongly “debated” by lawyers before it went into court, but once before the court, inconsequent “debate” ceases and the case proceeds on orderly lines with both counsel and witness behaving themselves in accordance with well-defined rules of evidence under the watchful eye of the court. Experience in the correspondence columns has shown what need there is of strict bringing to order in cross-examination and so you are to be complimented on being the first editor probably who has shown how to bring paper cases to finality.—l am, etc., FRANK SAMPSON.