PREMIERS AMD THE PRESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 January 1917, Page 3

PREMIERS AMD THE PRESS.

"It is impossible for the situation to be fully understood without a . knowledge of the' respective relations of the two chief actors in it —Mr; Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith—to the daily Press,'' says the New Statesman.

"In the art of influencing the Press Mi Lloyd George has no superior in British politics. He works indiscriminately through editors, through owners, and through members of newspaper stalls. Before and during the recent crisis he cultivated all his Press connections with extreme assiduity and really remarkable adroitness. A large portion of the time and the energy which are popularly .supposed to be devoted to 'winning the war' are in fact spent in interviewing journalists and wire-pulling editors. His emissaries are in the political clubs saying what he wants said with a verbal correspondence that', is sometimes almost comie.

"His secretaries are in intimate telephonic touch with someone or other in practically every newspaper office in Fleet street. Ilis activities, moreo\er, lire not confined to the English Press. There is no other member of the Government who is so flatteringly accessible as he is to the correspondents of the Trench papers, whose messages, inspired from 11, Downing street, arc telegraped back to London as the opinim. of Paris.

"Mr. Asquith, on the other hand, will have nothing to do with the Press. Like Mr. Balfour, he ha? always professed a iather exaggerated contempt for it Since he became the head of the Coalition Government his aloofness has been intensified —possibly because he wished to cut all party connections. He will neither see nor communicate with any ntwspaper representative. If he has favored any newspaper it has been his chief detractor, the Times. In this attitude we think he is greatly to blame. 'He may despise and disapprove <flf ihe influence of the modern Press, But to ignore it as he has done is simply to play into the hands of any irresponsible group which cares to employ that influence agaiijst him and against the national unity of which he is the trustee "It has been one of the most remarkable features of the controversies of the last eighteen months that Mr. Asquitli, without doubt the most powerful- and the. most universally-respected' man in tl-.(. country, has scarcely been defended at all against the virulent, unceasing, and incredibly unfair attacks that been made, up.in him The fault is largtlv his for nat having realised that under the conditions of modern democracy, especially at a (iine when the normal Parliamentary method* of ventilating opinion ait in abeyance, it is for him not oi;iy" a right but a duty to find means of counteracting the disruptive and dcnu.talising effect of a wearing stream of Press misrepresentations."