Those Menu

Headline-Hunters Wander in P-NG

Here's Danger In

Numbers

iere is an increasing number of national observers who believe half of the world’s troubles 'd be solved if Press, radio and ision were muzzled for six ths. Certainly, Australia’s task • ringing New Guinea natives to ige where they can be expected overn themselves is made a great harder by some newspaper es that appear under banner lines in Australian and overseas papers and subtly show Austra in a perpetually unfavourable . There is usually a grain of ! in these stories but when that i is blown up into a mountain presented out of context for its itional value it becomes a erous and mischievous weapon he hands of those who wish us •ood.

ADERS of Sydney’s Sunday Mirror were recently startled by g headline, Peril Looms for Us r ew Guinea, over a story written Brian Hogben, “Sunday Mirror rter who visited New Guinea itly”. ley were probably even more zed when they read the story h began: have just returned from New lea, proud, disgusted . . . and ;y frightened. . , .” hat disgusted and frightened Hogben was what he saw as il discrimination, including the that in hotels the dishes on the u are numbered and customers r by those numbers and not es. He felt that P-NG native ers resented this as a slur on intelligence, e can tell him that representa of the PIM have been going in out of the Territory since 1930 with a few exceptions, the num d menus are as great a con ence in 1961 as they were 31 s ago—as you find pretty smartly ju try any fancy variations with set dishes. [But the thing that y beats us is how you find out i a native NG waiter that he its, as racial discrimination, be asked for “Number three”, in- J of, say, “Lobster Thermidor”.]

Early in December, another news paper wanderer, Homer Bigart, a New York Times correspondent, re ported from Port Moresby that Papuans were beginning to show growing resentment against the Aus tralian administration, especially in connection with “discriminatory” ap plication of liquor laws. This un balanced comment was published in New York, and widely distributed across the world by news agencies, and given headlines unfavourable to Australia.

New Guinea, for many years, has been suffering under an increasing plague of newspaper wanderers, whose summary of conditions there are published as if they were the

authoritative and responsible conclu sions of experienced people. They are, of course, almost always the opinions of headline-hunters, who spend a few hours in the Territories, listen to beach and bar-room conver sation and then race to plane or radio office to send a generally cock-eyed view of Papua-New Guinea.

There are in the Territories many problems relating to political, admin istrative and sociological conditions, and the more light that can be thrown on them the better. But this is not a task for people who cannot see beyond the “Europeans only” rule of the Konedobu Club, or the Papuan Hotel practice of asking their guests to order from the menu by

bers, because the native waiters are generally illiterate. r ter innumerable experiences of kind, the P-NG Administration d be quite justified in refusing lission to wandering pressmen to the Territory, unless they 1 show that they have sufficient dedge and experience to write >etently about conditions in a itive place like Papua and New ea.

But even this may not be enough; Mr. Hogben’s piece of deathless prose might have had a different slant if his editor, although knowing that it wasn’t “news”, had chosen to give him a headline which said: We Should be Proud of New Guinea.

You remember he did say he was “proud”—as well as “disgusted” and “frightened’—when he left the Terri tory.