BROADCASTING AND DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 527, 29 July 1949, Page 5

BROADCASTING AND DEMOCRACY

Sir-If there is a "19th Century flavour" in Sir Thomas Hunter’s remarks, there is a positively medieval flavour in G.H.D.’s. To defend the prohibition of "overt attacks on Christianity" is to ignore the fact that there "are growing numbers of civilised people who are not Christians; and to silence their voice through one of the most widely-used media of propaganda is not such a far cry from the stake and the inquisition, or, in our own day, Dachau and the burning of the books. To ex: press these sentiments in’ the same breath as attacking the Communists for want of "liberalism," when Rev. Stanley Evans (who has been there) says, "The Churches of the U.S.S.R. are not merely free but active in the defence of their country," surpasses the bounds of criticism, G.H.D. forgets that what is good in Christianity is common to a thousand philosophies, and that what is peculiar to it has done much harm to civilisation. Among its fruits have been intolerance and persecution, and as a crusader against these, Sir Thomas Hunter has a proud record.

C. V.

B.

(Wellington).

Sir,-Some interesting _ observations on this subject are made by your correspondent Sir Thomas Hunter Just why he should tie those observations up with the "suppression" of the series How Things Began, I cannot see. It was not the "religious bodies" who requested that this series be suspended. If by "religious bodies’ we mean churches and church dignitaries, it might be said that the greater number of such would accept all that was said or implied in the series How Things Began. Like Dr. Barnes, these people are in such haste to proclaim themselves as being of modern thought, that they seldom take time to enquire into the effect of modern research on considered opinion. The religious bodies and the sponsors of the series are both slaves to the lamp --"popular authority." How Things Began was suspended because there was evidence that a substantial body of opinion among research workers in the fields of science had moved irrevocably away from the positions which the series took for granted. Such opinion claimed the right to be heard along with the series broadcast. As the programmes could not be adjusted to permit of this course being followed, How Things Began was suspended. Surely your correspondent, with his concern that "all shades of opinion may be heard," should not complain that the procedure followed was undemocratic.

OMICRON

(Nuhaka),