The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1946. THE ATTACK ON REUTER’S

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 7, 9 January 1946, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1946. THE ATTACK ON REUTER’S

D EUTERS as a news agency lias won to its place by the proof of the authenticity of the reports which are published over its name. When news is sent from one district to another the reporter concerned knows what degree of interest the news will possess at the receiving end and he reports accordingly. A reporter in South Africa sending a despatch to London makes a mental picture of what would interest him if he were in London and thus writes objectively. The despatch would differ considerably from the story which he would write for a local, newspaper in South Africa, where every reader would know and be interested in much of the surrounding circumstances. When the London agency broadcasts the story to the world another pruning process goes on and the despatch is reduced in size and, consequently, many details are left out. But the main incidents of the story are preserved. They are not altered, nor are they “conditioned,” to use the term employed by Professor Arthur MaeMahon, of the Columbia University, in his report to the U.S.A. State Department. If the news reports were tampered with subsequent events would.prove where they were wrong. It would have been an easy task for Professor MacMahon to collect, these specific instances and offer them as evidence in support of his assertion that such “conditioning” went on. It is true that on occasion the personal element operates on the news, but that cuts, both ways. The ease with which Professor MaeMahon accepts hearsay statements as evidence is surprising. His acceptance of Mr. Nelson Johnson’s letter, that news “tends to go first to London, where the most important consumer lives, and is thence transmitted throughout the Empire, conditioned by such processes of sclectiol and manipulation as the British news agencies such as Reuter: give it,” is hardly sufficient for any responsible person to regarc as evidence. It is purely an expression of opinion and the professor should have asked first for the evidence on which such a state ment rested. He would then have been in a position to judge of the value of the statement. That Reuters, or any other news service, or for that matter independent journalists, would for the sake of future business supply information and articles for no payment at all during the difficult days that lie ahead of newly-liberated newspapers should cause no surprise. It is no more than Ihe commercial practice of putting a good customer on his feet after a severe and undeserved reverse. The whole of business knows of such a policy being applied in every walk of life. •*» That Professor MaeMahon is awry in his facts is self-evident, and this is made quite plain by the explanations offered by Mr C. J. Chancellor, Reuters’ general manager in London, who stated the precise fee paid by a Mexico City newspaper, namely 16?. American dollars a month, which can harly be regarded as “damr near nothing”—to cite the MaeMahon report. The New Zealand Newspapers have a representative in London who is none other than Mr. Alan Mitchell, who received his training on the “Wanganui Chronicle.” Mr. Mitchell’s status as a journalist is of the highest, both for the correctness of his reports and for his high powers of narration, as was evidenced by his stories of New Zealanders in the air war and the descriptive quality of his despatches. Mr. R. A. Henderson, for Australia, and Mr. Sission Cooper, for South Africa, have testified to the falsity of Professor MacMahon’s report concerning their respective countries. The important question to be asked is: Why did Professor Arthur MaeMahon make a report based on such unsubstantial evidence and why did the U.S.A. State Department publish it?