THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRESS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 69, 8 April 1937, Page 4

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PRESS.

We ca^anot but think that the general body of newspaper readers will feel that the daily press pretty well throughout the coUJatry, is taking a great deal toO seriously the really virulent attacks inade Upon it first by Labour's weekly journalistic organ, then by the Prhne Minister himself on the eve of his departure for the Old Country, and finally by the "reverend" gentleman whom, at ,a high salary, Labour hajs put in charge of the State broadcasting system. In each case theywere couched in sucli manifestly extravagant, not to say vicioUS, language that they can have convinced no intelligent reader of their sincerity. The only intended purpose they may hajve achieved is to gratify among Labour's more extrexne supporters the appetite for thajt sort of pabulum which Labour orators have in tlie past so sedulously cultivated. • THat appetite is particularly a,vid and has to be satisfied in some way. On the other hand, however, most folk will call to mind the old political axiOM which says, "when you have no good case, abuse the other arde^' As Matter of fact, it must have been with a chuckle up . his sleeve that Mr Savage deliveredhis vitriolic assault on the ''capitalistid" press, No one knows better than he— and one at least of his ministerial colleagues hajs quite f^ankly admxtted it— that, so far as reporting the sayings and doings of the Government and its inembers go, they have been accorded by the dajily press quite fair and, indeed, very generous fereatment." It is entirely safe to say that rlo previous Government in this Dominion has ever had so much valuable space and costly type-setting afforded to it for disseminating among the ptiblic its views, its deSigiis ^nd its accomplishments, For this purpose, so far as we are aware, no opportunity has been denied them. Indeed, when we come to think of the almost limitless Volume of gratuitous self-advertisement afforded by the prqss to all the more self-assertive ministerial heafds, it must haive been with an inward smile that they have re#d the report of Mr Savage's rather venomous harajngue. Indeed so much of self-laudation and self-adulation have Ministers managed to get into the papers thaft they have left little, if anything, for the papers themselves to say in the way df approval, even where it was perhaps dtie. The oilly function left for them has been to put the brake upon this ' runajway of self-glorification by criticism of the more manif est we&knesses in the Government's policy and administration. !What ou,r Government, in the exuberanc# of its victory at the polls> seems to forget is that only timeand some little further experience of hard times can prove how far the course they are pursuing is the right a^nd the safeone for the community as a whole, and more expecially for those sections which are made its pCcttliar care. We have a good long way to go yet before it will be ajscertained what the ultimate results will be, and very much must depend upon a continuance of the eeononiic recovery to which a Government of an entirely different colour has so signally assisted in the Motherland. It might be well, therefore, even in their own eventual interests, if our Cabinet Ministers would do a little less in the way of blowing their own individual trumpets and leave the ptiblic a little more to judge them calmly by actions and results. Explanations and elaboratiops may, of course, be i'equired from time to time and for these the press will always find room in the public interest. In the meantime, however, the newspapers can scarcely but realise that the main body of their readers must be getting somewhat cloyed with the so often reiterated and seemingly interminable paeans of selfpraise in which, with perhaps one notable exception, Ministers indulge, Some ekcuse may he fotmd for them in the novelty of the position to which they have been so suddenly raised. But by , this time, after sixteen months of office, they should have settled down a little to its realities and responsibilities apd recognise that they were not put there to sing their own praises. They have had great good fortune in coming in on a rising tide of prosperity, and no one would think the less of them if they wer'e to make some littleacknowledgment of this and of their indebtedness to the last Government for leaving the country 's finandes in a thoroughly sound position. The exception suggested above will haVe been easily gUessed. It is the Hon. Peter Fr.aser, who has gone quietjy and efficiently and with the fullest acceptance about the highiy important tasks allotted to him. It is all to the good that it has fallen to him to fulfil the duties of Prime Minister in Mr, Savage's absenfie, and possibly we may hope that his colleagues will How become infected with a little of his self-contained earnestness and stifle their evident craving for the limelight.