The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1929 TEARS FOR MR. ATMORE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 726, 27 July 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1929 TEARS FOR MR. ATMORE

ABD-FASHIONED notions that Parliament was an assembly constituted for the sole purpose of doing the business of the country have been swept into oblivion by the hue and cry raised over the Hon. H. Atmore’s failure to get his speech of Thursday evening into the morning papers. Headed by Mr. G. C. Black (Motneka), who doubtless felt a neighbourly interest in the sad case of the afflicted Minister, the Government vented hitter sorrow over what it foolishly chose to regard as deliberate distortion or suppression. The Prime Minister almost shed tears over the “very shabby treatment” Mr. Atmore had received, and altogether the united grief and pain on the Treasury benches left no possible doubt about the Government’s desire to devote as much of the current session as possible to talking to the country at large, without regard for the Opposition parties or even the waning political light of Hansard. To raise an outcry like this without any consideration for the merits of the political speech is very foolish. Mr. Atmore is a competent speaker, whose ability to arrange words attractively compensates for an invariable tone of acidity in his utterances; but even a very good speaker can fall down at times, and in this ease the consensus of Press Gallery reporters and of sub-editors on morning papers throughout the country was that Mr. Atmore’s remarks, at that hour of the night and in view of the deluge of Parliamentary “copy” already in, did not warrant liberal treatment. If Mr. Atmore sets up his own judgment on his speech against the combined opinion of newspaper men who, by training and aptitude, are competent to sift the wheat from the chaff, then he has a good deal higher estimate of Mr. Atmore and all his works than we think he has —and that is saying something. In the final decision concerning questions like this, the last word is with the sub editors. It could not well be otherwise. They have a host of other news standards to consider. The members of Parliament who daily scrutinise their newspapers to see how much space they have been accorded are only human in believing that they have the news field legitimately to themselves; but they are considerably wrong. Even when the men in the Press Gallery, by concurrence or individually, decide that a man is saying something worth reporting, those judgments need not necessarily coincide with the judgments of the desk men in the newspaper offices. On those men lies the heavy responsibility of presenting to readers a balanced newspaper. They have to suit their ideas to iron-bound limitations of space, they have to bear in mind the setting power of their machines, and lastly they have to remember the inexorable hours of going to press, so that the editions may catch trains and dispatch agents, and papers be cast on time on to suburban porches. Talk of deliberate suppression by the men in the Press Gallery is so much hocus-pocus, of which the Prime Minister should last of all have been guilty. The men in the Press Gallery are chosen by their principals for certain qualities of efficiency, integrity and good judgment. The substantiation of a charge of political favouring against any one of them would result in that man’s speedy recall. As a matter of fact, members of the Press Gallery rarely entertain hard and fast political beliefs. Their experience of politicians is too harrowing. Overlooking the political scene in all its pettiness, they cannot help but see it in its true perspective. Possibly their view is jaundiced, but some of the speeches they are condemned to hear would jaundice a sheeted statue. If their detachment and a certain saving grace of humour preserve them, the same factors absolutely prevent them from developing a party bias. Their job is to report what is worth reporting, and if they fail in that assignment they are the first to suffer.

Of course, the unfortunate truth is that the Press of New Zealand pampers politicians very sadly. Eighty or one hundred years ago the Press was well content to load unleavened columns of political argument on to its subscribers. The reports would begin, “Mr. Disraeli said,” and would faithfully recite what he said, even unto the last syllable. But gradually it was learned that only a limited number of people read that sort of stuff and consequently new values arose. The same sort of lesson may, in the fullness of time, impress itself on members of the New Zealand Parliament. At present, not content with what the newspapers do, a good many members consign copies of Hansard to their suffering constituents. The speeches that appear in Hansard have been as rigorously sub-edited by the speakers themselves—as some party newspapers are accused of doing—except that, in the case of Hansard, the original verbatim invariably shows improvement after treatment. But even this charming response does not prevent the circulated Hansards from coming to ignominious ends. In time this expensive luxury may be dispensed with, and politicians will have to rely entirely on the Press. And they will receive, as they do now, impartial treatment in the news columns according to the value or interest of their pronouncements.