CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 April 1922, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

PROHIBITION IN CANADA. (To the Editor.) Sir, —My attention has been called to a public notice which you published in your issue of Saturday last, setting out an alleged increase in Canadian drug importation from 1916 to 1919. Although published on your front page the “notice” bears no indication that it is an advertisement. I therefore am forced to the conclusion that it is published as a news item and endorsed by you. The figures set out are so fantastic and so void of authenticity that I am amazed at the Editor of a journal, with the deservedly high prestige of the News, publishing them. It may, of course, be a fresh journalistic method of imparting news to your readers. Had the figures been published by the liquor interests there would of course be no need to notice them, but bearing as they do the editorial endorsement they maypass as accurate. —I am, etc., W. H. HAWKINS. New Plymouth, March 31.

[Mr. Hawkins is evidently joking. The announcement appeared in our advertising columns, and was paid for as an advertisement. There was no camouflaging it as a news item, as our correspondent, as an old journalist himself, knows well enough. It is quite a new thing for a newspaper to be expected to guarantee the reliability of statements contained in advertisements. This is a responsibility that must be accepted by the advertiser, not the newspaper. —Ed. ]