NEWS BULLETINS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1938, Page 5

NEWS BULLETINS

PREMIER DENIES “PARTY TWIST.” REPLY TO MR FORBES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Information concerning the system followed by the Prime Minister’s Department in preparing news for the official bulletin broadcast nightly was sought by the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes (Opposition, Hurunui) during consideration of the Estimates in the House of Representatives yesterday. “The news given out from the Prime Minister’s Department over the radio has a fair amount of party twist about it,” said Mr Forbes. “The Prime Minister and other members of the Government have plenty of other opportunities for putting propaganda over the air.” The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, said the instructions were that the bulletin was to contain anything in the nature of news, items of a departmental character and other paragraphs of interest to the public, but not propaganda. “If it hapnens that the deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank have gone up by £5,000,00(1, members of the Opposition say it is propaganda,” said Mr Savage, “but if they go down by £5SuO.OOO we are told by the Opposition that is news. No news is given out over the radio without my authority, and I do my best to cut out anything in the nature of propaganda, or anything that can be classified under that heading. Although the material is prepared by an official of the depaitnient T am in the last analysis lesponsible for what goes over the air.”