Untitled

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3090, 23 May 1881, Page 2

On more than one occasion we have noticed that the Hawke's Bay Herald has given credit to morning papers for the expenditure of large sums of money in payment of telegraphic messages that night after night are unblashingly stolen by the evening journals. The following letter from the manager of the Press Association to the editor of the Daily Telegraph puts the matter very plainly, and will afford the Herald a lesson which we trust it will not readily forget :—

Sir, —I regret exceedingly that through the action of the Herald you should have been put to any inconvenience regarding Sir George Grey's Auckland speech. The Herald had no right to refuse the message, and the telegraph authorities should not have permitted them to do so. Our rules do not allow any paper to refuse taking a message. Instead of being 5000 words, as stated by the Herald, the message only contained 1081 words, and its cost, instead of being £5 as the Herald says, would have been only five shillings and sixpence. If they did not wish to use it they should have taken it and handed it over to you in the morning, collecting the wire charges from you. As we do not repeat to evenings what is sent to mornings, or vice versa, our system requires this exchange between morning and evening papers respectively of telegrams from any cause not used in the first publication of the receipt. Any telegrams received by you too late should always be handed over to the Herald on payment of wire charges. We cannot allow any feeling of local jealousy between papers to interfere with the system. The Herald's remarks about " stealing" messages are altogether unjustifiable. Every paper belonging the Association has a perfect right to the free use of any Association telegrams appearing in any other paper, and indeed is expected to copy them, as the information is never repeated by us where it can be copied. I certainly do not think that morning papers have any reason to complain of their position as compared with evening ones. I may add that I have written to the proprietors of the Herald to the same effect as I do to you.