LEADER WRITING “FACTORY”

Southland Times, Issue 23634, 8 October 1938, Page 12

LEADER WRITING “FACTORY”

PROPOSAL MADE BY MR FRASER PRESS ACCUSED OF LACK OF ORIGINALITY A suggestion that for economical reasons the newspapers of New Zealand should establish a “leader writing factory” in Wellington for the distribution of articles criticizing the Government was made by the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) in his address in Smith’s hall last night. “It is so useless for so many leader writers’ throughout the Dominion to write the same things against the Labour Party,” said Mr Fraser, “that I am going to suggest something new. They have been saying the same things, but using different words. Now, that is a waste, and uneconomical, and, therefore, I am suggesting that there should be one leader writing factory established in Wellington, and that modem articles attacking Labour should be written there and telegraphed out so that they appear at the same time and in the same language, and in much better language than is used generally. If you want to be more economical, I would suggest that they look up the back files when Sir George Grey raised the banner of democracy in this country—a banner which was carried also by John Ballance and Richard John Seddon. At that time the leading articles were attacking those men in the same way they are attacking Mr Savage today. If the newspapers look up the articles from 1883 on, and substitute Mr Savage’s name for those of Grey, Seddon and Ballance, and hand them tc the linotype man they will get the same up-to-date articles that are appearing against the Labour Party today.” Mr Fraser added that the newspapers were only 40 or 50 years behind the rest of the people of New Zealand in political thought. He was offering that suggestion to the Press because it would save time and the leader writers could be put to more useful work. He agreed that the newspapers performed a very useful service, and the report of Mr Savage’s address was good honest service on the part of the Press, but among the things the Press was saying was that the Government was bringing tl.: country under a tyrannical and socialist domination. Well, they had had that charge made in New Zealand before.

“ ‘Socialist’ is a soft word,” Mr Fraser concluded. “There are so many s’s in it that it won’t terrify anybody.”