Mr Isitt and the Press.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18218, 31 October 1924, Page 8

Mr Isitt and the Press.

It is unpleasant to have to say of a member of Parliament who is also a reformer of public morals that he either does not know the meaning of the words he uses or does not care how ho uses them when he is angry. But nothing less than that can be said of Mr Isitt's vilification on "Wednesday of the Dominion's newspapers. Although the pain which a politician feels when newspapers condense him is no doubt a little sharp, Mr Isitt has been long enough in public life to know that what is not reported is, in the experienced judgment of the reporters, not worth reporting, and that this, and no other consideration of any kind, explains the neglect of any member of Parliament by the Press Gallery. The simple fact is that everything which was said on Wednesday and not reported had been said before, and reported before, and was worth no more space in any newspaper than it actually received. The only "manifestly un"fair"—and mucli worse than unfair—occurrence was Mr Isitt's monstrous t suggestion that the inactivity . of the reporters was "finance-controlled." It is true that there are financial reasons for neglecting speakers who have become tedious, as there are financial reasons why bakers do not deal in stale bread, but no one who is honest can say that the Press of the Dominion closes its columns to those whose politics, or moral or economic doctrines, it does not like. And Mr Isitt unfortunately went further, and did much worse, than to charge the newspapers with unfairness. "Fight any moral evil," ho said, "drink or gambling, and you have the "whole of the Press of the colony "against you, and they are unscrupulous in the methods they adopt in "misrepresenting your attitude and "your actions." Thi g is a plain charge that newspapers lack a moral sense, and if Mr Isitt did not realise what be was doing when he made it, his new allies on the Labour benches did. We do not know how proud he is to find himself in such company, but we hope he will realise that if he does not wish to be regarded as a trader in the same kind of dishonest abuse as the Labour Party specialises in he will have to be a great deal more careful with his words. No newspaper does or can misrepresent an opponent which allows him to present his own case, and no one can deny that newspapers do allow this as far as their space will permit. Mr Isitt's peculiar identification of morality with Prohibition, and moral evil with drink, need not detain us: though it is spiritual pride of a very offensive kind it is not new. But it is new that he should ally himself with those who declare, without even an attempt at justification, that every newspaper is corrupt which does not preach revolution.