The Globe. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1879.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1567, 26 February 1879, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1879.

We must apologise to our readers for again referring to wliat is a very unpleasant subject, namely, the use of our telegrams by the Lyttelton Times and Star, under the head of “ Special Cablegrams.” We should have dropped the matter if both these journals had not thought fit to publish in their yesterday’s issue a telegram from Wellington treating of the subject in question in such an unearned spirit that wo cannot, for our own sako, allow it to pass unchallenged. We did not touch on the matter yesterday because we thought that perhaps our contemporaries might answer our charge directly. Instead of doing so they furnish this telegram which gives a most disingenuous statement made by the editor of tho Wellington Chronicle. We publish in another column a telegram which appeared in tho Otago Daily Times, giving the answer of the Wellington Post to th« Chronicle ; also a telegram giving one of the articles in the Auckland Evening Star, which accuses the Herald of pirating our news. The Herald, like its Christchurch colleague, has used our special cablegrams, and placed them in its columns under the head of “ Special,” thus, as have done the Lyttelton Times and Star, leading the public to infer that the news was sent out direct from England, under tho superintendence and at tho cost of the Association to which it belongs. The Wellington Chronicle takes up the cudgels on behalf of its colleague the Herald, and attempts, not to justify the act of appropriating these telegrams, but to prove that the accusation made by the Auckland Evening Star against the Herald is a false one. The Chronicle endeavours to prove this by publishing a letter from the manager of the Press Association, which runs thus: —“ My answer to this is to place in your hands the original cable message of 81 words received by me at 8.34 p.m. on Feb. 17, a copy of which was sent direct to the New Zealand

erald and other papers from Wakapuaka that night.” [Wakapuaka is the New Zealand terminus for the cable between Australia and New Zealand.] And then the editor of the Chronicle appends this note:—“We have examined the original message received by the manager of the Press Association here. It contains all the news alleged to have been ‘ pilfered’ from the so-called ‘ special’ telegrams. The Auckland Evening Star has therefore made an utterly unfounded charge.” We beg to differ —it has not made an unfounded charge, and tho very statement of the Chronicle proves it. That journal does not dare to trace tho history of the message from England. The message was sent out to our colleagues in Sydney, as the exclusive property of our association, procured at a heavy cost and after much trouble; it was there seized upon by the agent of the Press Association and forwarded by telegraph to New Zealand. Tho Press Association had to pay the cost of the transmission of the abstracted intelligence from Sydney to Wakapuaka, Now Zealand. That was tho small sum paid by tho Press Association for intelligence gained in a most discreditable manner. Tho Association might just as well have taken it out of tho New Zealand evening papers belonging to our association. They would thus have saved themselves a few shillings, and tho matter would not have been one wit loss transparent. Tho true history of such telegrams as those in connection with which the Chronicle has sot up its defence of the Press Asso-

ciatiou is this—tho intelligence is forwarded to Sydney at the sole cost of our association, it is then clipped out of the Sydnoy Evening Hews by the agent of the Press Association, forwarded to New Zealand and published by the Herald, tho Lyttelton Times, and other papers as “ special cablegrams,” thus implying that they are sent out from England for the exclusive benefit, and at the solo cost, of the Press Association. Wo challenge the Press Association to disprove the burden of the accusation. Such a transparently disingenuous defence as tho Chronicle lias attempted is worse than no defence at all. If the Press Association wishes to shelter itself behind tho judgment of the Appeal Court, and say—“We have a legal right to your telegrams, and we intend to take them ” —let them boldly say so. If they see no harm in publishing them as their own special telegrams sent out straight from England, let them say so, although they can hardly expect the public to accept that view of commercial morality. We must again apologise to the public for touching on this disagreeable subject, but this must be our excuse —when paper* holding a high position in tho journalistic world stoop to such practices it is necessary that some one should probe the sore, and this, those most directly acquainted with the facts of tho case are best capable of doing. The promoters and founders of the Press Association, who are presumably responsible for tho acts committed by the Association, are Messrs. Wilson and Horton for tho Auckland Herald, Mr. G. M. Rood for the Otago Times, and Mr. W. Reeves for the Lyttelton limes.