Up Front

with the editor

When, one day, there is no further need for those small roneoed newsletters now put out by the Administrations of nany of our smaller island territories, PI M's “From the Islands Press” section will lose much of its flavour.

iESE newsletters take the place of newspapers in the smaller itories which have no newspapers their own, although sometimes i supplement existing newspapers give the Establishment its own :e.

"he best fun is to be had from ;e news-sheets which have the il publishing field to themselves, se are usually crammed with all s of public announcements, small it ads., letters and local trivia ch are the true stuff of the South 5 (“Lost: A male dog, white with wn spot near the tail, has been sing from Miss Morning Glories ddie’s home in Lakepa since last irday”, reports Tohi Tala Niue, how else would you know about s Freddie’s colourful Christian ies?).

What's not there

Tie newsletters are often reveal y noteworthy too for the material is not in them, and certainly s the awareness of missing items ch sets off the critics of the ernmental mini-press. lie report from Pago Pago on criticism of Pago’s official News letin, mentioned in this issue, is recent example. Some Samoan slators have complained that :ialdom carefully sifts the news content, and “if the content suits ain people then it is printed, if then the public is not subjected this particular news”. ’ersonally I’m not aghast, as some the Samoan legislators appear to at this “un-American suppression the news”. how me the South Seas Admini tion (or any other) which doesn’t

select only the news it wants known and omit the rest. Obviously it can’t fit all the local news into its news-sheet, and once it starts the process of selection it will select the items which it thinks might help its aims, or certainly omit those items which don’t help its aims.

Even an independent-minded editor of a government publication will be overruled at times by departmental officers who are less enlightened but carry more rank. It’s the price you pay for the service you get, and since the service is free, this is fair enough.

The editors, too, have to lump it, although I don’t imagine any one of them would believe for a moment he was producing an independent newspaper. There are ways he can fight back, as Walter Hambuechen, editor of the government-operated, roneoed daily Cook Islands News showed recently, when he objected to office censorship on a story he was running about the French A-bomb on nearby Mururoa. He was told his story was against government policy, so next day he paid for an advertise ment in his own paper to explain the censorship and his own stand in the matter. That’s the true stuff of the South Seas!

On your toes

l can appreciate the complaints of private enterprise editors about the continued existence of a separate government news-sheet in their area, if they confine their objections to the loss of newspaper revenue repre sented by the news-sheet’s policy of free public advertisements. But a government news-sheet, with all its shortcomings, can still help keep the independents on their toes, and also provide them with editorial ammuni

tion with which to thump Establishment from time to time.

Fifteen years ago, in New Guin the professional thorn in my s was Kate Vellacott-Jones, the I ministration’s PRO, who was dedicated to digging out good ne stories for her own releases that was rarely safe to seek her help contacting government sources case she put two and two togetl and scooped you on your own ra< bulletins.

And in Fiji 10 years ago, wh I was doing a short stint as edii of The Fiji Times, my particu problem was a pair of first-r; reporters masquerading as Govei ment PRO’S, called Jack Hackett a George Rawnsley. May their qui never run dry, but their task u to produce daily government har outs for the newspapers and o weekly summary of the news f radio broadcast on Friday night.

Extraordinary how many imp< tant government releases were ma on Fridays, so that first news of the would be contained in the PR bulletin—thus scooping the nev paper. The coincidence never ceasi to amaze even Jack and George— so they maintained during t] inevitable post-mortems at the loi bar, which at that period constitufi the Club Hotel in its entirety. In tl anxiety to compete, our ulcers m< not have benefited, but Fiji’s new paper readers probably did.

Stuart Ind[?]