A New Principle Of Free Speech

Southland Times, Issue 23254, 17 July 1937, Page 6

A New Principle Of Free Speech

What fantastic claims are made in the name of free speech! Mr F. W. Doidge recently gave an address on Socialism before a meeting of the People’s University Association at Auckland. Mr W. J. Lyon, member of Parliament for Waitemata, expressed a •wish to debate the subject publicly with Mr Doidge. Mr Doidge (so we were told in a Press Association message yesterday) “gladly accepted” the challenge and suggested that the Auckland national radio station would provide “the best forum.” Mr Lyon “unhesitatingly concurred” and offered to make the necessary arrangements; but, apparently to the keen indignation of both debaters, their request was refused. Mr Doidge then proceeded, at a meeting of the National Party at Mount Albert, to make a fine song about the rights of free speech. The application for the debate, he said, must be regarded “in the light of a test case”; an “important principle” was involved, and “considerable interest” would be taken in the ultimate decision of the Minister of Broadcasting. The only principle that is involved in the case is the principle whether any pair of Toms, Dicks or Harrys who want to have a debate are to be given, for the asking, a radio station for their “forum” and allowed to inflict themselves on thousands of listeners who pay good money for the station’s upkeep. No one, Labour or National, will have any doubts about the folly of applying that principle. It is not true to say, as Mr Doidge did, that “in the days when free speech over the air was our. common right there would have been no trouble in staging such a debate.” The A class radio stations have never been thrown open to all-comers; ,and it is to be hoped they never will be. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to command the services of the nearest radio station.