The Waipukurau Press. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1932. EMPLOYMENT PUBLICITY

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXVIII, Issue 129, 26 May 1932, Page 4

The Waipukurau Press. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. THURSDAY, MAY 26, 1932. EMPLOYMENT PUBLICITY

Anothei- sidelight on the Unemployment Board’s advertising expenditure is furnished by the comments recently made in the leading column of the “Hawera Star,” which journal defends the publicity up to a certain point, but condemns the basis of allocation. The criticism proceeds: “Some Opposition members in the*House raised a question regarding the expenditure of the Unemployed Board’s money on advertising the small farm scheme, the implication being that the Coalition Government was distributing the money only among newspapers who supported it. The nasty innuendo contained in this criticism may be safely ignored, but it is interesting to examine the Labour statement on this subject, in the light of the known facts. The first of these is that the Government has relied solely upon the newspapers to operate its various unemployment schemes. Even its unemployment taxing measures have been left to the Press to announce and explain. People may say—and we know some who do—“ Well, that is what the newspapers are for?” These very selfsatisfied people do not, of course, own a newspaper nor share in one, therefore they have no need to stop and ask themselves how newspaper companies find the money to pay wages and produce journals to serve the Government and the public. Newspapers are not public institutions; they are privately owned and they have to make a “do” of things according to the hard old laws of business. There is no Governpient subsidy for them, no patient taxpayer to be called upon for additional levies. They pay their way by selling space and service. The newspapers have been called upon by the Government for a vast amount of gratuitous service, and they have given it; but newspapers cannot continue for ever to give away the thing they have to sell and still live any more than a grocer can go on distributing free food-stuffs to deserving poor. No one, of course, expects the grocer to give beyond his means —but no one recognises that there is any limit to the means of a newspaper. The Government has exploited the newspapers shamelessly in matters arising out of the administration of the Unemployment Act. At last it has had a twinge of conscience and realises that if the small-farm scheme is a worthy object for the expenditure of the Unemployed Board’s money, expenditure on newspaper space for the purpose of selling the idea to the people is amply justified. Unfortunately for some of the newspapers which have consistently laboured in the cause of the Unemployment Board, the Governhient’s conscience on this question has developed somewhat lop-? sidedly; too much money has been spent in some quarters and none at all in others. This is not because the Government is ignorant of the existence of some newspapers, as its distribution of appeals for free help proves daily, nor is it because the Government is actively desirous of

favouring any particular section of the Press —it is merely a reflex of Government ineptitude in business. Fortunately for the unemployed and the country generally, newspapers are capable of taking a large view of large subjects and nobody suffers but the newspapers themselves.”