• "Why is the New Zealand Press so rightist? ... I am astonished at the way news is handled by almost the entire Press in New Zealand. In some areas sermons that backed the United Nations in its declaration of Britain as an aggressor were passed over, while the sermons of those who spoke in terms of expediency were given a column and a half. Lord Tedder spoke out strongly against the Government (over Suez) on moral terms that received great prominence in Great Britain, but was tucked away—if reported at all—in New Zealand."

—Dr. G. F. McLeod, Moderator-Designate of the Church of Scotland, in the "Evening Post," 8 January, 1957.

• "The absence of an effective left-wing or liberal press leaves the conservative press in undisputed control, and without any adequate means of comparison the people of New Zealand accept right-wing standards as normal. This supremacy cannot, of course, be altered. It is, however, wholly regrettable that the New Zealand Press exercises its supremacy not only in editorial comment, but also in its selection of news. . . . Undisputed right-wing emphasis ... is a positive danger."

—Monica Pembleton, in "Critic," Otago University Students' Paper, 4 April, 1957.

• "Newspapers are run for a profit. And since they have such a powerful influence on public opinion, they are run for that purpose also, by people who have reasons for wanting to influence public opinion. If you think they're run primarily to give you the news of the day, go away to some quiet place and work it out all over again."

—The late A. R. D. Fairburn, in the pamphlet "Who Said Red Ruin?" published in Auckland in 1938.

All these statements refer to New Zealand's newspapers, the means by which most of us get our idea of what is going on in the world.

The first two statements were made this year. The last one was made 19 years ago, but in a year which, like this year, was marked by a general election.

Revealing Comparison

Great Britain, with a population 24 times as great as New Zealand's, has only four times as many daily newspapers.

On those figures, you might expect New Zealand to be able to boast a much richer variety of viewpoints. This is not, in fact, the case.

Restricting our vision to the big-circulation metropolitan dailies, Great Britain has 12, of which five (including the one with the biggest circulation) are either left or liberal; New Zealand has eight, of which only two (both under a single proprietorship, and one rather half-heartedly) have distinguished themselves by stepping out of line over Suez and H-Bomb tests.

Overall, the position is worse. New Zealand has only one Labour daily—a small one on the West Coast, the area which least needs it. The thirty other dailies barrack generally for the National Party.

Great Britain also has a large number of independent weeklies whose comments are far from right—not only Tribune and Reynold's News, but the New Statesman, Spectator, and Observer.

With Voices Raised as One

"We are not divided, all one body we.

One in hope and doctrine, one in charity."

—Humans A. N. M.

New Zealand has one limp Labour weekly (whose publishers' have so low an opinion of the New Zealand public that they believe a few feeble paragraphs of political matter must be supplemented by pages of salacious and sensational muck). "Here And Now", the sole independent organ and excellent as far as it goes, appears only monthly and appears to be staggering financially.

The press prospect in Britain is thus almost infinitely brighter than in New Zealand. And yet even in Britain the National Union of Journalists (whose studied fairmindedness is shown by the monotonous sharing of their annual prize for Britain's best newspaper between "The Times" and the "Daily Worker") went so far, only a decade ago, as to demand a Royal Commission into the press, with special reference to "the influence of financial and [unclear: advertizing] interests the presentation and suppression of news and the dispersion and suppression of essential facts."

The journalists ought to know what aspects of the business needed investigation. A Labour Government set up the Commission—but in a form well weighted to make its findings comparatively innocuous—and even these were never acted on.

The much gloomier press prospects in New Zealand have never been subjected to a public investigation of any kind.

Investigation Needed

The press overseas has been coldly scrutinized in floods of books and pamphlets—Denys Thompson's "Between the Lines" and Norman Angell's "The Press and the Organization of Society" in England, George Seldes' "Lords of the Press" in the U.S., and A. E. Mander's "Public Enemy—the Press" in Australia. New Zealand's press has never faced anything worse than Fairburn's 16 page leaflet of 1938—and that limited itself specifically to the "N.Z. Herald".

In the circumstances, student newspapers owe a duty to their readers to draw attention to certain facts about their daily contemporaries.

The most striking fact is that which astonished Dr. McLeod—their right-wing unanimity. This means that editorial comment is, in general, a chorus of praise for National and of damnation for Labour—though they may snipe at the Government on small local issues or on the general question of taxing and spending which usually implies an attack on the "expensive" welfare functions of the State.

It also means that items of news favourable to right-wing views are given a lot of space, prominent positions, and big headlines, while unfavourable items are stowed away in comers, distorted, chopped up, or suppressed altogether. As a last resort the press has been known to publish' what are known in Parliament as "inaccuracies", and to either neglect to apologize or publish the apology in some obscure crevice.

For example, Labour movement news is never given any prominence unless it involves cither a defeat of radical by moderate elements, or can be given a twist unfavourable to whole movement. A squabble between Wellington's L.R.C. and Trades Council was given a succession of double-column headlines last October evidently for the latter reason. Similarly, the scare words "nationalization" and "controls" made acceptable copy out of certain Labour Party conference remits published in the papers three weeks ago.

This sort of thing will be kept up and intensified as the election approaches—just as prior to every other election in New Zealand's history.

Facts Suppressed

Similarly in industrial disputes (notably in 1951) and referenda (especially that on C.M.T. in 1949), the same discrimination is habitually practised in favour of the employers, militarism, and the right, against labour, anti-militarism, and the left.

How about suppression? Proof positive is difficult to come by, but it is often obvious that some piece of information must have been within the knowledge of the paper and yet was never printed.

We have on our files, however, a clipping from the Evening Post of three years ago—issue of 30 April 1954, main local news page—with an item headed "Labour Scene in Australia". It reports a press conference given by a visiting Australian trade union functionary, Mr. R. A. King. The matter in the article is broadly "moderate" Labour, proarbitration, anti-militant, anti-communist.

This paragraph is scored through with a heavily pencilled cross. The rest of what Mr. King said fitted in with the Evening Post's picture of the world. This paragraph didn't—so the readers were not allowed to sec it.

Anyone working on a newspaper could give daily examples of this sort of thing.

On the other hand, reactionary assaults on any aspect of the welfare state built up by past Liberal and Labour administrations, is assured of an inflated headline a showcase position, and a welter of laudatory comAttacks on school-leaving age, old-age benefit legislation, milk in schools, the 40-hour week, and general wage orders, provide recent examples. The same goes for any demented cry for judicial flogging or a get-tough policy with teddy-boys.

Some comments at the Maori Women's Welfare League conference last month demonstrated the unpleasant racist taint in New Zealand's press—especially in court reports. While some serious pressmen are active in a contrary direction, this undertone points up n nasty aspect of our press's rightism which hit its nadir in the "four Maori Kings" propaganda of 1956-59 when Labour held the House by a majority of four. Continual representation of Maoris as criminals and halfwits must have the effect of discounting their political responsibility, and is a step in the Jim Crow or Apartheid direction.

But the press's racism is not limited to Maoris. "Italian Fined £250 for Bookmaking" shrieked the main local headline in the Evening Post on 15 April. (In fact, nothing in the article suggests that the convicted man was bom anywhere but in Wellington.)

Hard Economics

What about lies? These are also difficult to pin-point, and usually subtle. For instance the fantastic statement in the Evening Post that "several hundred pounds'. [unclear: wont] of damage was done on [unclear: ca] perty on 1st April has never been withdrawn. And compare Evening Post and Southern Cross reports (29/9/48 and 30/9/48 of demonstrations of the earlier date by V.U.C. students against conscription—the former said 69 students took part, the latter said 150. One of them was obviously not telling the truth, and we have our opinion as to which.

All this is not just cussedness on the part of reporters and sub-editors.

We often forget that in fact the "Evening Post" is Blundell Bros. Ltd., and the "Dominion" is the Wellington Publishing Co. Ltd.—respective capital £30,000 and £40,000. They are private business concerns, run for profit—the most influential contributors to which are not us readers with our three penny-bits, but the advertisers, who are also private business concerns run for profit.

The list of shareholders of Blundell Bros. Ltd. shows that the shares are concentrated in the hands of a comparatively few persons—most of whom are Blundells, and all of whom own comparatively large blocks of shares. They are all comparatively rich men.

Shares in the Wellington Publishing Co. Ltd. are spread around a bit more evenly, but prominent among the shareholders are Daniel Johnston Riddiford (lawyer, and well-known crusader in right-wing causes), Robert Mackenzie Watson (a director of Sharland & Co.), Gordon Graham Gibbes Watson (chairman of C.M.L. and B.P. (N.Z.) Ltd., director of Ford Motors, N.Z. Felt Textiles, and Matheson Minster). Sir Will Appleton (director of Amalgamated Brick & Pipe Co., N.Z. Guarantee Corporation, Bryant & May, Griffin & Sons, Schullers, Victoria Laundry, Bond's [unclear: Hosiwy,] Wellington Woollen Manufacturing co., R. McCaskey & 'Son, Frozen Product Ltd, etc., etc.) [unclear: and] concerns (including C.M.L., and [unclear: N.Z.I] and N.M.I.).

Viewed in the light of these facts, the right-wing policios of the newspapers make sense. Rather distasteful sense.

Political proclivities are apt to be dictated by hard economic facts.

There is not much we can do to alter either facts or proclivities, but we can, in our small way, counter the influence, of both by raising a voice of honest doubt, verging at times into radical protest, through our student press.