The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “Luceo Non Uro.” THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 1936. The Government and the Press

Southland Times, Issue 22913, 11 June 1936, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. “Luceo Non Uro.” THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 1936. The Government and the Press

Mr Savage has for some time been obsessed with the idea that the newspapers are not treating his Government fairly. He is evidently not satisfied with the full and impartial reports of Parliament and of Ministerial activities which appear from day to day in the news columns of every reputable paper in the country; he wants to control the editorial columns as well, so that his every action receives its due weight of praise. In other words he wants the newspapers to become his instruments of propaganda in the same way as he proposes to make the broadcasting service an instrument of propaganda through which the people of this country will be told just what he wants them to be told, and no more. In the debate on the Broadcasting Bill Mr Savage bracketed the newspapers with the Opposition. Trying to justify the dictatorial powers which his Government has taken over radio broadcasting, he said: The Government has a duty to the people not to keep them in the dark. What the newspapers neglect to do the broadcasting service will do. . . . The Government is going to be the master of publicity. We are not going to wait for the newspapers or the Opposition to tell the people what we are doing. His inference was, of course, that the New Zealand Press has been giving incomplete and coloured reports of the Government s activities —a charge for which there is absolutely no justification. The Press has treated the Labour Government as fairly as it would have treated any other Government. It has, indeed, treated Mr Savage generously. Though resolutely opposed to the Socialism which underlies much of the new legislation, it has been able to commend editorially many of Labour’s proposals. If it has criticized other proposals somewhat sharply, so it criticized proposals of the Coalition Government and governments before that when it felt they were contrary to the public interest. The rights of criticism held by the Press —rights which are shared by every one of its readers —are among the most cherished possessions of a freespeaking people; and in New Zealand they are not being abused. If all that Mr Savage has said and inferred is to be believed, it is to say the least curious that members of the present Opposition should be smarting under the same sense of imagined injustice. The Hon. Adam Hamilton, for instance, told the House of Representatives on Tuesday night that the Government owed its election to the newspapers. He said. If any Government was ever put in by the newspapers it was the present Government. The Government went in with an anti-Govern-ment wave, created a good deal by the newspapers. Mr James Hargest’s contribution was this: We on this side of the House feel that the Press has been fairer to the present Government, both when it was in Opposition last year and as the new Government, than it has been to us. Labour blames the Press for giving undue support to the Opposition; the Opposition blames the Press for giving undue support to Labour. The Press could have no better tribute to its impartiality.