SUB-EDITED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 344, 4 October 1932, Page 3

SUB-EDITED

N.Z. CABLE NEWS PREMIER HINTS AT SETTING UP OF CENSORSHIP. Pointing out that there was no means, outside a postal censorship, of controlling the forwarding of detrimental reports coneerning New Zealand, the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes, wrote to the Petone Bofough Oouncil xecently regarding the alleged puhlication in outside countries of reports which might be detrimental to the credit of the Dominion. Mr. Forbes went on to say that in regard to telegrams, the position was that under the International Telegraph Convention right was reserved to stop 'the transmission of any private telefrom which appeared to be dangerbus to the security of the State, or which was contrary to the laws of the country, to public order, or to decency. That right was exercised in any circumstances deemed expedient, such as upon the oceasion of earthquakes or industrial trouble. While newspaper correspondents might, 'in the main, accurately record an occurrence, the arrangement of the feport might be so designed as to place the most unfavourable construction upon the happening. Moreover, messages were usually of a skeleton nature, leaving the contents to be expanded by the addressees. It was conceivable that in this process the sense of a message might become distorted according to the views of the persons handling it. It would be seen that it was thus possible for a message of an aecurate and ostensibly unhiased. content to bear an appreciahly different aspect when finally revealed in the columns of a newspaper.

The Government had been by no means inactive in connectio with the matter, continued Mr. Forbes. At the time of the Murchison and Hawke's Bay earthquakes, and also of the Auckland and Wellington riots, numerous cablegrams giving fair and accu- ' rate reports were sent to the High Commissioner for New Zealand in London, who arranged puhlication in Home papers. A similar course of action was also taken with the Government repressentatives in Australia and Canada. The Prime Minister further pointed out that in the matter of transmission from radio broadcasting stations the radio regulations required the licensee of such stations to prevent the transmission of any radio communication of a false and misleading eharacter. In view of the disturbed conditions which recently existed, the licensees of all broadcasting stations were suitably warned that close supervision was required upon any matter transmitted and from inquiries of the Post and Telegraph Department it appeared that they had every reason to believe that the necessary discretion was reasonably observed.