Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 6. 1966.

[NZ Truth is wrong again]

Kevin Sinclair has at least one dislike stronger than that for students. It is the Committee on Vietnam.

Last Week, under the front page heading "Vietniks Support Labour with Horror Campaign" he let that dislike diston the facts.

"The Vietnam protesters." he wrote, "say they will get the cash [for mass-circulation booklets] from voluntary donations. To prove this they have printed a list of advance donors which will be distributed when they ask the faithful to dig deep to support their propaganda effort.

"Among the dozen or so early donors are a number of active members of the Communist Party."

Then five names are listed, with donations totalling £21.

Here Are The Facts:

• There are 72 names on the list, not "a dozen or so."

• None of the Communists he names was among the first dozen donors.

• The donations from the Communists he names represent only 5.6 per cent of the total donations.

Advance copies of the booklet had been in general circulattion two weeks before the article appeared yet Sinclair apparently failed to obtain one.

Yet he wrote:

"Judging from the past record of the committee and members, this will be another anti-American and anti-Government outburst."

In fact, the booklet proves to contain photos drawn from USIS. Associated Press, and New York Times photo services. Its text is taken from the New York Times, News-week, Esquire, and the Sunday Mirror.

But The Story was substantially wrong:

• Nine months earlier, a Truth reporter had cited The Same Plat as an example of the slums in which students arc forced to live.

• The same landlord had been featured by the Sunday Times two days earlier for a slum house he owned in a nearby suburb.

• When the tenants vacated the flat, none of them were students.

• Truths reporter unexpectedly failed to get the quotations on accommodation he expected from secretary Mike King. Instead, he made them up (see separate story).

Following student protests in early 1965. a Truth reporter approached the students association and asked for assistance in determining whether complaints about accommodation were Justified.

Some weeks afterwards. Truth began to publish the Sunday News and his article appeared there.

For days on end." the reporter wrote. "I was repeatedly reminded of the misery of hundreds of people who live in this city, and the feeling of utter hopelessness that overcomes young people who come to Wellington to study."