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A journalist speaks: 'Revolution' In Press Needed

By D. F. Cropp

"A revolution is needed in our newspapers," the Sunday Times reporter Robin Bromby told Victoria students.

He was addressing the Labour Party Club on "the press and politics in New Zealand".

He outlined recent trends in New Zealand newspapers and made forecasts about the next 10 or 20 years.

He forecast the growth of chain newspapers in this country like those in the United States.

There, small papers were cutting their costs through rapid merging in all departments and the increasing use of national columnists.

"In New Zealand these trends could be seen in the recent merger of two small Southland papers, and the dependance of all papers on the N.Z.P.A. for all national news.

"Newspapers in New Zealand were becoming businesses and they did not want to offend the source of their profit.

"They are less willing to go bald-headed after the truth," he said.

They merely reported the facts and did not attempt any analysis of the news.

They were much more interested in plane crashes or local police news than anything controversial.

In politics they indulged in name-calling rather than going into the major issues.

What they didn't realise was that their audience was growing in intellectual ability and discernment.

The revolution needed in newspapers was that the public should be told 'why'.

The quality of their workers was part of the reason for newspapers being the way they were.

They were fairly poorly paid and were expected to do a long apprenticeship. This was why they attracted very few graduates or other people of ability to their ranks.

The results of this were that political editors did not know what was really going on.

They printed the news blindly and never evaluated, he said.

However biased it was, no newspaper could ignore real news.

The Labour Party was just not newsworthy. Editors were not trying to keep the Party out of the columns.

The party itself should take more cues from the press as well.

Examples of such cues were news about Comalco, the Russian wool deal and the New Zealand finance corporation.

Only one of these was ever followed up by the party in attacking the government in the House.

In answer to a question, Mr. Bromby said he did not consider editorial censorship important in political issues.

"There is, rather, a process of 'socialisation' of the beliefs of the editorial board," he said.