GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING.
The following extracts upon the above subject are from a leading, article in the Tuapeka Times of Wednesday : — Amongst the most serious of charges repeatedly and persistently urged against the administration of the present Government has been that they have exercised their patronage with regard to the Press in a manner which indicates motives of pure partizan-slyP)--if not of actual corruption ; that the advertising has been distributed exclusively amongst journals which are loud in their approval of ministerial policy, leaving " out in the oold " independent papers wMch have a soulof their own, and, wq may add, a remarkably voluminous vocabulary of Billingsgate wherewith to overwhelm, in season and out of season, Ministers and •' all their works." .. . , • Upon the -subject of Go* vernment advertising, it may be recollected that early in the last session a very acrimonious debate took place" in the House of representatives upon the motion of the Hon. Mv .Fox for certain returns » and to any unprejudiced mind it then came perfectly clear that there was no foundation for the charges then and since made against the present Ministry, who had not indeed interfered in any essential particular with the arrangements of their predecessors in office ......
The case, in fact, completely brake down, although, of. course, it was not to be denied, nor, indeed, was it necessary to deny that, as a rule, the papers in which the advertisements are inserted advocate Liberal principles. It is, indeed, only natural that such papers, representing the views of the majority of the people, -should have the largest circulation ; and we may go further and say that if, in the distribution of advertisements not included in the annual tender, Ministers have chosen to prefer friends to foes they can hardly be blamed, all other circumstances considered. It will be found when the return laid before Parliament late in the session is printed., that so far as the Government have advertised, they have given the advertisements to the best mediums they could select to ensure the fullest publicity, which the present system, initiated, we believe during the second Ministry of Mr Fox, is capable of admitting. *
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Bibliographic details
Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 230, 6 December 1878, Page 5
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356GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING. Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 230, 6 December 1878, Page 5
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