The West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1910. THE CABLE NEWS SUPPLY.

West Coast Times, 23 March 1910, Page 2

The West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1910. THE CABLE NEWS SUPPLY.

have had occasion once before to refer to the quality of cable news that finds its way out from the older countries. Whoever is responsible for the extraordinary itad " wonderful " items that are sent out to the colonial press from the other side of the world, we cannot compliment the sender for his ability to gunge the public mind as to what it considers "news." With the whole world to draw from the cable man apparently can procure .nothing better than some trifling episode that in New Zealand would hardly be wired from one town, to another. And yet a glance at the Home papers shows that news is there in abundance. We have hurled at us in all their horrid details, romance, tragedies, and gleaning* from the side-tracks of life, that are too obviously common to even need passing reference. Apparently " the councils of the nations" in the eyes of the cable man, are of but secondary importance. Whenever an opportunity presents itself to garner a "tit-bit" _in itself of no intrinsic value—the cable man i* there. Speaking on this subject the Lyttelton Times says:— "Of late there have been frequent [ ,a,nd valid complaints of the quality of | the press cables that roach New Zeai land from other countries. Many of I our own readers have protested that I they are lew interested in the doings of the Queen's basset hounds and the tragedy* in the Red Mill than they are in the constitutional issue in Great Britain and the rumours of a tariff war [in America. Rut that vague person, occasionally referred to as the cable ngcrt, who controls our destinies so far as our foreign neww is concerned, appears to think that the country will ■thrive best on a penny dreadful diet. Evidently his object is entertainment rather than instruction. Ho does not bother himself about an odd ten millions in .the Navy Estimates, hut lie gives us all the particulars of Mr Cudahy's experiment in tatooing, of thr- Belgian hatpin tragedy and of the shooting of a Sydney barmaid. The details of the armours of a ninety4hree-year-old bachelor possibly may have their hearing upon the fortunes of the dominion, but the ordinary social and

political economist will find it difficult to appraise their exact value. Frankly, . the service of Home and foreign news supplied by the Press Association, is far from being a satisfactory one. It may be that the public in New Zealand are temperamentally more sedate than their fellows in Australia, but it is quite certain that the quality of the news which is “headlined” in the daily journals on the other side of the Tasman sea does not appeal to newspaper readers in the dominion. The Press Association or course, is a purely commercial concern, and it seeks to secure its news from available sources, with a view to giving the public the best possible service obtainable within the limits of judicious expenditure. But under existing circumstances' it is dependent upon the discrimination of one or two individuals, who apparently are not the best judges of colonial taste. It would be well if these gentlemen could realise that cheap melodrama is not the most important thing on the stage of life. The making of legitimate news is quite as wonderful and quite as ingenious an operation as the “making of many books ” ; but it should not be beyond the capabilities of the experts who are 1 expected to keep the New Zealand public informed of what is going on in the outside world.