SPORTING NEW5. Can We Do Without It?

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 239, 28 January 1905, Page 6

SPORTING NEWS. Can We Do Without It?

AFTER a yeai s rest, a religious body has again popped up to condemn the spirit of sport that permeates this colony A member of the body agam recommends that the papers seen in its reading-rooms and libraries should have all the sporting and batting news clipped from them As a small start towards the purification of the press this notion doe<3 not promise the great success that its advocates hope for We have at random seized a daily paper, and clipped out the horse-racing news On the back of this news we find the report of a YM C A meeting, so that the reader of such a paper, if he happened to get a clipped copy, would be deprived of reading what mig-ht be more elevating than the starting prices for the Kauri Cup or the Bush Bracelet « * * The mere fact of reports of spoitmg events being printed in the press does not necessarily mean that the younf men will be influenced by the report, or that they will rush away and place money on a horse because they hear the betting is five to> one If they are good young men, they won't read the sporting news m the papers and it isn't necessary to clip it If it is clipped they are either forbidden to read about the liver mixture on the reverse side, or prohibited from assimilating the "locals," or the reports of meetings that elevate # ♦ * Now, there are quite a number of people who object to a certain kind of religious organisation They may be wrong, of course, but they believe they have as much right to their opinions as the persons who object to sporting news Therefore, if they start a clipping campaign against the kind of news they object to, sooner or later the skeleton news one 13 able to get in readingrooms will be most unsatisfactory » * » If a pei son wants to follow racing, or football, 01 any other sport not wicked m itself, he won t be debarred meiely because the repoi't is clipped out of the paper he patronises If he s anxious to find what is clipped out, he will possibly gamble a penny as a speculation just to get a paper of his own If he's a gambler, he isn't going to quit gambling because there's a hole in the paper There are "bookies" at every corner and "totes" on every couise, and a fatherly Government to help him cultivate a taste for hoise-racing In most public libraries, a notice is posted asking people to protect their own property by not mutilating the papers. Fortunately, papers are not written for one class of people only, neither are the majority

of papers mn on purely philanthropic hues It has even been asserted that newspaper proprietors require to eat and drink and be clothed as much as do the clergy or the legal fraternity or the navvy.

If this organisation believes it is right to clip all sporting news from its own private copies of papers, it must hold it right to clip them from all papers, or prohibit altogether the publication of that class of news This being absolutely impossible, the only way left is for the objectors to spoz-tmg news to come to light with a daily journal that shall contain no sporting news, but only the news that is entirely free from offence to the minds of the objectors. If such a journal shuts up the shop of all the other journals, it is evidence that it fills a long-felb want If it fails, then it is undertaking Mrs Partmgton's contract of sweeping back the flowing tide with a broom. In the meantime, these unco quid people should approach newspaper proprietors with a request to print sporting news in such a position that when clipped the clipping does not include reports they do not object to