PRESS TELEGRAMS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 344, 4 October 1932, Page 5

PRESS TELEGRAMS

ECONOMY COP^MISSION'S CRITICISM IS UNTENABLE AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT Wellington, PJonday. The following* statement regarding the cost of Press messages, to which reference was made in the report of the National Expenditure Commission was made to-day by the chairman of the United Press Association, Sir Cecil Leys. "The statement of the National Expenditure Commission that Press telegrams cost the State £53,000 per year will not bear examination. It is accepted. that the telegraphic service is essential. In this eountry Press messages provide a medium that prevents this need of commerce and social life from being an insupportable burden on the community. These messages are a steady source of revenue, and carry overhead charges which could not be greatly reduced were they to suddenly disappear. "In four cases out of five a Press message is carried over the lines to a dozep different sources, and brings to the department 18/- per hundred words, where a private message, with ' all its difficulties of delivery, realises 8/4 per hundred. "The Press is not lightly charged. The rate is three times the pre-war rate and approximately three times that charged for a similar service in the United Kingdom. That a knowledge of the affairs of the eountry ! and its government should be the ■ prop,erty of the people goes without , saying, and the only medium through which this inf ormation can be dis- , seminated is the Press. "As- regards the Imperial wireles? service, of which the Comniission ■ suggegts the Press should pay one;%lf the initial cost, this is an Em- , pire public.ity . that . would f ail in its , object, and inevitably be discontiniijed, weji'e it not that it is enabled to A'eacla thp public through the news- ' papers, "which, besides a subsfantial contribution to, .the cost, pay all the land charges entailed in its dissemination. "The critieism of . the Commission in this matter is based on entirely wrong premises, and is untenable."