NEW ZEALAND MISREPRESENTED.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1122, 9 May 1911, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND MISREPRESENTED.

o— AUSTRALIAN PRESS PREJUDICE. (By Telegraph.-SBccial Correspondent.) Auckland, May 8. Mr. C. Somers, of the firm of Russell and Somers, P. and 0. Steamship Co. s agents, who returned to Auckland yesterday by the Maheuo, after a visit to Sydney and Melbourne, has, come back convinced that a great deal of prejudice is shown by some of the Australian newspapers concerning New Zealand. "It is most regrettable," said Mr. Somers'to a "Herald" rcpressntativc, "to see the manner in which this country is misrepresented in the press. The most trivial incident, if, it is of a harmful nature, is bolstered up and made to appear in the light of a national catastrophe. Take", for instance, a paragraph that aDpeared recently in the Sunday 'Times' of Sydney in reference to an ..earthquake in Pahiatua. Here are the headings:—'Earthquake in New Zealand,' 'Swaying Houses and Falling Chimneys,' 'Panic-stricken Peonle,' 'New Zealand Shaken to its Foundations,' That is the sort of thin?," continued. Mr. Somers, "that is doing an enormous amount of harm in keeping away immigrants and tourists from the Dominion. The recent plague cases in Auckland are also shockingly exaggerated, and it is not to be wondered that it frightens intending visitors from venturing to our shores, especially people from the Old Country. I certainly think the New Zealand Government should keep (heir representative informed of the facts concerning events happening in the Dominion .so that they may be in a position to refute damaging misrepresentations on the part of tho Australian newspapers."