PRESENT DAY SCARES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1938, Page 7

PRESENT DAY SCARES

COMMENT ON NEWSPAPER PRACTICE. PROFESSOR VON ZEIDLITZ’S VIEWS. Passing some comment on the strange surroundings in which human beings were living today, Professor G. W. Von Zeidlitz, speaking last night at the break-up ceremony of St Matthew’s Collegiate School for girl, made reference to the scares which tended to become very violent in these days. Fear, he said, was the most unfortunate thing that could .befall human beings, and' perhaps was the most mischevious. He said he had lived through a great many scares, at least half-a-dozen of emminent wars that did not materialise. These scares had an enormous news value and newspaper writers were people who knew what sort of thing would sell their paper. No doubt it was very good business and perfectly sound from the business point of view, but the fact remained that they tended to work and elaborate on the fear of the readers. Professor Von Zeidlitz said people should try to keep themselves from the hustle and bustle of a state of fear, such as what happened in' Great Britain during the recent crisis while the Continent was quite calm. There were probably a good many reasons for these scares having been more or less worked up. The reasonable course for hurpan beings was to steer clear of fear. Another thing rather closely allied and one that also had a news value was the publication of abuse and denunciation of other people; it would be better if he or she doing this were more concerned with their own faults. That attitude of faultfinding was not a new one. He could remember a dozen occasions during his experience in which a general violent Press campaign of every country but. one was directed against a single one of the civilised nations. On half-a-dozen occasions it had been directed against Great Britain. Now it was usually directed against Germany and Italy and he doubted very much if any one of these cases had a solid basis of fact. It did not interest him tremendously whether it was a solid basis or not, but what did interest him was that i they found nothing to criticise in them-j selves. Look at what was going on at j the present day in regard to the supposed denunciation of Jews in Germany, he said. Supposing all this de-1 nunciaticn were true, what a dreadful thing, said the Professor, for this country to refuse admission to these Jews.! It was not beautiful.