PREMIER AND PRESS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1764, 2 June 1906, Page 2

PREMIER AND PRESS.

(Per Press Association.) Auckland, last night. Commenting on the Premier's remarks about the Press Association, the Star says:—The return referred to by the Premier simply showed the difference between press rates for telegrams and ordinary rates. A large proportion of telegrams were own correspondent's wires, and in every ease the telegrams were paid for by the papers receiving them, not by the Press Association. The Press Associa-1 lion receive no rights or concessions of any kind from the Government that are

I not equally open to every newspaper in the colony. The large reduction in press rates as compared with ordinary rates is I made in every part of the world, even I vvherc the wires are privately owned. So I far from the Press Association receiving special concessions from the Government, its existence effects a very large saving to the Telegraph Department. Without such an Association it would be impossible for the present telegraph staff to do the work, I inasmuch as every message sent by the Association is duplicated to a very large number of papers. The effect is, for example, that every message sent from Auckland by the Press Association to the evening papers is paid for thirty times over, whereas but for the existence of the Association the same news would be transmitted separately to all those papers. When allowance is made for this multiple payment for Association messages, the assumed loss on press messages is mythical so far as Association messages are 1 concerned. The return submitted was ( altogether misleading. <