PRESS AND THE LAW.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4554, 23 April 1923, Page 1

PRESS AND THE LAW.

AN AMUSING SPEECH. Mr. Justice Eve was one of the honoured guests at the house dinner of the London Press Club in February, and made some amusing comments on London journalism as it is conducted to-day. “When I look round these tables,” he said, “ and study the manner of man who is before me. I somehow or other feel convinced that whatever I want to say, that however long I want to address you, next week you would still persist in issuing your piquant, stimulating, and meticulously veracious contents bill; you would not be willing to abandon your annual contest for the best-kept cabbage patch or bed of Jerusalem artichokes; you would not forbear for a single day to inform me what your net sales are; you would refuse to substitute the erudite, if dull, judgments of the Chancery Courts for the somewhat rude details of the Divorce Court; your prophets would still dream dreams, but would never spot a winner except in cases of odds on; and, finally,, you w uld go on occupying valuable space by directing the attention of your registered readers to ingenious schemes for covering every risk which no registered reader is ever likely to incur.” There was, he continued, a great deal in common between the two professions of law and journalism. “We are both out to guide, instruct, and, incidentally, to live on the public Our most attractive attribute is our extreme modesty. You live by advertisement; we exist on our merits. It is yours to flaunt at my matutinal meal the gigantic circulation of your paper and to take away my appetite by informing me how many of the registered readers (names and addresses suppressed) have been chewed up in the last 24 hours, and of the enormous amount which you are about to disgorge to their executors, administrators, and assigns—a piece of information which I venture to think contains a harmless suppressio veri, for I understand that the ultimate payer is not the newspaper but the indemnifying insurance company. We, on the other hand, shun publicity. I should be afraid to say what amount of time is wasted in Lincoln’s Inn, and more particularly in the Temple, by barristers and others running after their friends in the Press to ask them to refrain from mentioning that they have been retained ‘to defend some notorious criminal or in an interesting divorce suit. But, seriously speaking, within the space of half a mile are the permanent headquarters of the Law and the Press, and I make bold to say that in no area of similar extent on the face of the earth could you find two professions in which there are more, or as many, brave comrades, generous rivals, good sportsmen, loyal friends, and tough opponents than in our two professions.”