MR. MUNRO’S SPEECH

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 275, 26 November 1935, Page 2

MR. MUNRO’S SPEECH

A STATEMENT ISSUED

NEWSPAPER’S REPLY

(Per Press Association) DUNEDIN, Last Night.

Mr. Munro has issued a statement emphatically denying that anything in his speech could be so construed as to mean that the Labour Party, an avowedly constitutional political party, would under any circumstances resort to using guns or smashing anything, as attributed to him. Mr. Munro further states that the report in the ‘Otago Daily Times’ of Friday was a deliberate and unscrupulous misquotation of his speech. To this the “Daily Times,” in a leader, says inter alia: “Mr. Munro was reported competently and accurately by an experienced journalist of unimpeachable integrity, and he should therefore have no grievance; but he WAS reported—hence the trouble. As for what he said, ‘Not all his piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all his tears wash out a word of it.” “All the vociferations of his colleagues on his behalf must be equally superfluous and futile. When speakers make statements in public which they afterwards regret as unfortunate or injudicious or tactless they not infrequently endeavour to make out that they have been misrepresented. Mr. Munro goes a step further. Our report he now declares to have been a ‘deliberate and unscrupulous’ misquotation. He does not venture to say in what respect he considers it did him an injustice. It is the business of the Press to be accurate in its reports. Our report of Mr.

Munro’s speech was entirely accurate. Public speakers do not always feel the same obligation of accuracy as lies on the Press; even Parliamentary candidates can be strangely forgetful of what they said from the public platform.”