BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1948. PRESS CENSORSHIP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 46, 14 May 1948, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1948. PRESS CENSORSHIP

Recently, according to a contemporary, a member of the Kaituna River Board'quite seriously put forward the suggestion that it might be advisable for a conference to see reports of meetings before they went into the Press because, he is reported t;o have said, “there were a lot of things that might get into the Press that should not be published.” That such an audaciously anti-democratic suggestion could come from a responsible member of a responsible local body is but another symptom of a tendency amongst big frogs in small puddles to interfere with one of the basic freedoms of democracy. It is to the credit of the conferring bodies that the suggestion was not treated as being one that could be adopted and made effective. It was quite rightly pointed out to the meeting that the Press had the right to report anything that was said at a meeting in any discussion not taken in committee.

It might have been added that, had the Kaituna River Board, or any other local body, passed a resolution purporting to give itself the right to censor the Press, the only result would have been to provide the newspapers with this year’s best funny story, to be laughed over in editorial offices and reporters’ rooms wherever it was heard.

As yet in this country, the Fascist system of muzzling the Press has not been hdopted, and it is a safe guess that the majority of citizens are thankful that it has not. It is equally safe guessing that any attempt by members and servants of minor local authorities to clamp on the gag will be resented by the people they represent and whose interests they are , elected and e appointed to serve.

-This “pocket Hitler” system of unofficial censorship is not uncommon in the smaller centres, where often local body men, local administrative officers, local businessmen, and practically every petty official of every small organisation wants to set up a private Press censorship bureau to say what should and what should, not be published. Most newspapers welcome constructive suggestions.- Certainly that is so so far as this one is concerned. But none will submit easily to the irresponsible die-* tatorship of people who are often particularly ill-qualified to judge what, in the public interest, should or should not be published, either on account of ignorance, bias, or the fact that they have axes to grind. So far as meetings are concerned, the, view traditionally accepted is that no participant' in any discussion has the right to withhold anything from the public unless the meeting formally decides that it should go into committee.

Most pressmen are lenient in their application of that rule. The Kaituna River Board incident and others like it seem to suggest that the liberties newspaper men have allowed local body members and others to take with their essential rights as recorders of matters of public interest are not always appreciated.