THAT WHANGA MEETING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 132, 25 November 1911, Page 4

THAT WHANGA MEETING.

Ally thing that will serve its own cause, fair or unfair, is eagerly seized upon and used by tine Wellington Dominion, and it .is therefore not surprising to find it pouncing upon the report of Mr. Hine's Whangamomona meeting appearing in our columns and holding it up to scorn as a piece of partisan malevolence on our part. It does not trouble to sift the thing or hear both sides, but immediately proceeds to Jibel us in a way that has become characteristic pf this desperate journal. What aire the facts? The report was sent to us by a correspondent, and we published it in good faith, just as we have published reports sent in by Mr. Hine's people of his meetings. Mr. Hine immediately questioned the accuracy of the report, and we published his explanation, at the same time expressing regret if our correspondent had made the mistakes attributed to him. Then two of those present at the meeting wrote stating that the report was "correct and truthful" (this letter appearing yesterday), whilst the correspondent wrote privately stating he would stand by it. Now Mr. Me.Cutchan writes to the Stratford paper confirming the report except in two minor particulars. Another correspondent wrote in support of Mr. Hine's protest against the incorrectness of tlje report, his letter appearing yesterday. So, on the one side, we have men who say the report was correct, and on the other those who say it was not. We have not the slightest feeling in the matter, one way or the other, a®*l certainly would not be a party to knowingly publishing a report calculated to injure Mr. Hine or any other candidate. We give each side considerable latitude in the matter of reporting their speeches, for after once 'fully "doing" their speeches it is impossible to send reporters to all their meetings, and so we are dependent upon the candidates or their friends for reports of their subsequent doings. In the' case in question, the report came from a correspondent whom we had every reason to believe wis reliable, and we published it in perfectly good faith, and with not the slightest idea of damaging. Mr. Hine,- who lias, as a matter of fact, on more than one occasion been kind enough to convey has appreciation of the fairness with which he has been treated by the News. The Dominion newspaper since its birth has not only been indecently unfair to every politician not on its side 'of the fence, but it has assumed an air of intolerable superiority towards its contemporaries. Its .political venom has poisoned its whole outlook, and it apparently exists less as a newspaper than as a public scourge. It is impossible to conceive a print so flagrantly poisonous or so incapable of seeing any matter in its just proportion.