invisible censorship'

Island press disturbed by invisible censorship'

From FELISE VA’A, in Apia

RELATIONS between the press of Western Samoa and the govern ment of Western Samoa, generally speaking, do not seem to be harmonious at present. The press is concerned about a rigid, invisible kind of censorship of the news, while the government is concerned about vigorous criticism of itself in the style of the old Apia Weekly. That remarkable newspaper was forced to close down late last year for financial reasons.

During the time of Mataafa’s premiership, the Public Relations Division practically overwhelmed the press with press releases dealing with policy matters and government news

both significant and insignificant.

Under Tamasese’s premiership, the press rarely gets a press release from the Public Relations, resulting in extra work for press personnel and oc casionally a misstatement concerning government activity.

This is made worse by a frequent departmental policy whereby only the

minister or the head of the depart ment can give out any news informa tion and those below those ranks are forbidden or discouraged from giving out any information to the public, however slight.

When recently the Samoa Times erroneously reported that the Chief Justice, Barrie Spring, had resigned the Prime Minister retaliated with a strongly worded press release denying that the Chief Justice had resigned, and affirming that the Chief Justice would be returning to New Zealand in June at the end of his contract.

The Prime Minister labelled the Samoa Times story on the chief justice as both erroneous and dero gatory. But apart from what was plainly a little irritating matter of inaccuracy, the Samoa Times in dicated that its stories on the Chief Justice were in no way derogatory of the Chief Justice’s tenure of office.

The Prime Minister contended that Cabinet did not decide the question of the Chief Justice’s tenure of office. This is scarcely credible. The government will naturally deny what it had not announced officially. But it certainly did not justify its attack on the Samoa Times.

A government statement denounc ing the Times articles purporting to come from the Prime Minister was read over the government owned radio station, 2AP (the only radio station in Western Samoa). When the Times wanted a reply to the government statement to be read over the station, the request was refused by the station.

The Times howled that it was un fair, and said the station was bound by the rules of good journalism to present both sides of the story. It denied, in an editorial, many ac cusations levelled against it by the government.

The incident serves to illustrate the need for government to be more open with the public through the news media. Too often the present government has been too rigid in its policy regarding releases of even routine information to the press. If the press sometimes is wrong, the government may be at fault in not telling it as it is.