Up Front

with the editor

The fact that this month happens to be the first anniversary of this column probably is of no significance to anybody but me. And its significance would no doubt have been lost on me too if it weren’t for a cryptic message passed to me recently from Percy Chatterton, in Port Moresby, which said, “Tell Inder if he’s not going to write his column I’m not going to write mine!”

THE reason for Mr. Chatterton’s message was that my Up Front piece had been omitted from a recent issue (for technical reasons, as it happened). Although I haven’t com pared notes with Mr. Chatterton, I don’t deceive myself that he thought my column so valuable he would go to the lengths of literary blackmail to get it back in the journal.

I believe, after 12 months of regu lar columnising, that what Mr, Chatterton probably had in his mind, but which he expressed in the prudent manner we have come to expect from him, is “Tell that louse that if he hasn’t the fortitude to stick to his monthly chore why should he expect me to stick to mine?”

Chore is the active word here.

I have for Mr. Chatterton a private admiration for his strength of purpose in producing each month, right to deadline and with no editing necessary, his literary lucky-dip of human interest and sagacity.

His column demonstrates both his intellectual capacity and the inner reserves that made him such a notable missionary for so many years.

I hope I can continue to publish him regularly without being expected to emulate him, and thus to be found wanting.

Having made that confession, I want to add that although Percy cannot write anything in his column which is not to the point, any regular readers of this particular column up front should not expect me to say anything of special significance.

Certainly they should not expect Up Front to contain monumental editorial expressions of policy, of the “Where We Stand” variety. When this column crept into PlM’s pages 12 months ago I did not intend that it

should be anything more than a gossipy selection of personal com ments on Pacific people, places and happenings. It wasn’t and isn’t PlM’s leader page.

I admit it is probably a reflection of editorial opinion in that it reveals my own attitudes at times. But so does the rest of this magazine reflect the editor’s attitudes. Editing is a very personal matter; it’s what an editor selects as being significant that puts a particular stamp on his journal.

Editorial board?

I don’t know how else you can edit, unless you do it by editorial board, as some do, in which case you might as well get yourself a more stimulating job as foreman of a factory making toothbrush handles.

PlM’s policy has never been directed by an editorial board. PIM has no policy—if by policy you mean that on the wall we have a printed list of attitudes we must not take, or lines over which we must not step.

We do have a personal yardstick, so ordinary that I blush to record it. It’s simply that we try to report, in readable English, the significant and interesting developments in the Islands, for the information of the people who live in the Islands. Just that.

Many readers don’t understand this, including, I suspect, Ken Inglis, Professor of History, at the Univer sity of Papua-New Guinea, who managed to indicate in a paper last year that some of the views of a PIM correspondent in New Guinea were at variance with the truth and that this material was unhelpful. I don’t consider it is PlM’s task to

record each Pacific development as a balanced academic thesis.

We don’t always agree with views we publish. A correspondent or con tributor may see a situation in terms that we don’t agree with, but so long as we feel his assessment has been made honestly and constructively he is welcome to our space. Sometimes, in fact quite often, he might be biased —and so might we!—but isn’t there honest bias?

The way I see it, the South Seas at this dramatic stage of its develop ment is a melting pot of opinion and lias, and what PIM has to do is to reflect it.

Some interpretation is also required )f us, on those occasions when a traight report would virtually be neaningless. It might be accurate o report that P-NG had a new >olitical party, but the fact wouldn’t >e in any context until we explained hat several others already existed, md tried to explain what they stood or and how they were being received n the territory.

Also on occasions it is up to us o indicate how we feel about particu ar issues and thus bring to attention evelopments which we think are eing overlooked or misunderstood.

When most people outside the ’ooks regarded Albert Henry as an iterfering upstart we said he was dnning popular support in the Cooks nd that he should be taken seriously.

Wien Hammer Deßoburt was getting le long run-around from Canberra, IM was stressing that the real depth f Nauruan nationalism was not eing recognised by the people in uthority, to their own and to the lauruan’s detriment.

Which if any of the material that oes between our covers, recording ic moods, the hopes, joys and biases f the South Pacific, is relevant in le long-term is for the historians a decide. When, 10 or 20 years om now, the PhD scholars of the outh Pacific universities make their ritical footnotes to the material we rint today, I merely hope they ill at least find that our motives >r publishing it were honest.

Stuart Inder