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Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 881, 6 December 1916, Page 6

Some discussion took place at the meeting of the Red Cross Executive yesterday regarding the position of the secretary and more particularly with reference to remarks made by Mr A. S. Clarkson and others at a recent meeting of the Automobile Association. The report which appears elsewhere speaks for itself. It will be noticed from a perusal of it that Mr J. A. Flesher takes exception to the publication'of Mr Clarkson's remarks, which he says only appeared in The Sun. In his opinion the onus rested upon us to verify the statements made by members of the Automobile Association, and he went on to suggest we were adopting methods which sayored of American journalism. The Past point can be disndssed with the iemark that Mr Flesher does not know what he is talking about. But for the benefit of Mr Flesher and others who are as unfamiliar as he is with the duties of a newspaper in such matters, we desire to dissent very strongly from his contention that it is our business to withhold publication of statements made by responsible persons unless we have personally verified them. Mr Flesher's feelings would probably be hurt if we declined to report him till we had personally checked his statements, and we venture to saythat Messrs Clarkson, Kesteven, and others whose remarks were reported on the occasion referred to, are equally entitled to be treated by a newspaper as citizens who speak at

public meetings with a due sense of responsibility. If these gentlemen have done Mr Treleaven any injustice—and it certainly appears as if they had—he has his remedy, and no doubt they will be quite ready to make an amende honourable. A great many men who participate in public and quasi-public affairs are careless enough of their facts at any time and if they thought that newspapers would undertake to become responsible for the accuracy of their speeches they would be more careless than ever. We have no intention of relieving such persons of the responsibility for the correctness of their own statements. Further, the circumstance that other papers did not report the discussion at the meeting of the Automobile Association does not concern us at all. We do not think it could have been deliberately suppressed. As our readers have been told before, papers in the newspaper trust limit the amount of space they devote to reports and general reading matter. The result is that a great many matters of public interest go unreported by these journals. The Sun's policyis to suppress nothing and publish as much as possible. That policy will be adhered to as closely in the future as in the past.