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Telegraph Department cleared of 'hacking' charges

A series of events in 1870-71 led Otago Daily Times editor George Barton to claim in his newspaper that the government had been intercepting telegraphs for political gain. After the government sued Barton for libel and he counter-sued Telegraph Department head Charles Lemon, a Parliamentary Select Committee was convened to investigate the affair. On 10 November 1871 their report, which exonerated the Department of any wrongdoing, was tabled in Parliament.

This was in the days before overseas telegrams, so any major international news came by ship and was then sent internally (by Morse Code) via the telegraph system, along with thousands of other communications. The telegraph system stretched in a line from Invercargill to Auckland (apart from a small stretch in the Coromandel where telegrams had to be carried by courier until 1872). Any suggestion that the department that controlled the telegraph system might be abusing their power was a cause of great concern.

The accusations against the Telegraph Department might appear tame compared to recent phone-hacking scandals, but at the time they were taken very seriously. They included delaying passing major international news items on to newspapers that didn’t support the government, illegally intercepting a journalist’s telegram about a speech by an opposition politician, and claims that Charles Lemon had been moonlighting as a grain merchant for his brother.

The fact that the government chose to sue its accuser, and then took the extraordinary step of offering Otago Daily Times staff a ‘pardon-in advance’ so they wouldn’t incriminate themselves giving evidence against Barton, seems to have caused as much of a backlash as the accusations of departmental wrongdoing.

An Evening Post editorial claimed the incident was an abuse of government power and money and could be seen as setting an unacceptable precedent:

No Editor of a public journal will in future dare to expose abuses, however glaring, censure the proceedings of a corrupt Government, or stand up for the rights of the people if he knows that he is liable to be criminally prosecuted at the will of the Government.

Barton left the Otago Daily Times shortly after the case against him concluded and went into legal practice in Dunedin. Charles Lemon retired from his post as Superintendent of Electric Lines in the Post and Telegraph Department in 1894, having survived a number of other enquiries similar to the telegraph scandal of 1870-71.

This Today in History entry is adapted from 'The Great New Zealand Telegram-hacking Scandal (1871)' (pdf) by Dave Wilton .

Geoffrey Cox

Geoffrey Cox in 1932, the year he left New Zealand for Britain on a Rhodes Scholarship. Cox forged a successful career as a journalist and wrote several books based on his experiences in Europe during the 1930s and 40s, notably Defence of Madrid (1937). During the war he was responsible for the ill-fated paper Crete News.

Read more about Geoffrey Cox

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-C-22830
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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Media interviewing The Beatles, 1964

A media scrum awaited The Beatles shortly after their arrival in Wellington on 21 June 1964. The late Peter Sinclair, a well-known broadcaster who hosted live music shows on television, is standing to the right with a recorder in his hand.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: Dominion Post Collection, EP/1964/2083/37-F1/4-071856-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Parliamentary poem: 'Breach of privilege'

Hear selected verses from the poem 'Breach of privilege', which is about tensions between Parliament and journalists in 1898.

There were tense relations between Parliament and the press gallery journalists when this was published in the New Zealand Observer and Free Lance on 1 October 1898.

Transcript

You may slang a fellow-member, and your words may be as free
As the phrases of endearment used by mariners at sea;
Indulge in lurid language of a kind that would amaze
An angry bullock-puncher in the old Colonial days …
You may wreck a reputation from the cover of a hedge,
Or – as politicians term it – Parliamentary privilege …
These things are merely trifles, only fit to raise a laugh,
But woe betide the journalist who prints a paragraph
Reflecting on the evidence before some committee,
Or some M.H.R. with character of spotless purity
At once Jove's thunderbolts are launched at his devoted head;
He will wish that scrap of evidence had wisely been unsaid;
For the direful Standing Orders, and the precedents from May, Remind him of the terrors of the awful Judgement Day;
Of bottomless perdition he stands trembling on the edge,
For this – ye gods! – this paragraph's a BREACH OF PRIVILEGE.

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

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Parliamentary poem: 'The gallery boys'

Hear selected verses of the poem 'The gallery boys', about the press gallery in the 1890s.

The press gallery was very much a male institution until the 1970s. These verses of song from the 1890s suggest the camaraderie amongst the men.

Transcript

The midnight chimes have rung, the House is getting bare,
But still the 'Gallery Boys' toil on, and still the 'boys' are there.
Though their eyes may be weary and their fingers be sore,
Their pens they must drive till of talk there's no more.

And then for home and bed through dark deserted street,
Midst sticky mud and slush and driving rain and sleet,
Sometimes no bed until it's well nigh dawn,
For the 'stonewallers' will keep them on well into early morn.

Sing Ho! for the Gallery Boys,
The 'Boys' who are youths, the 'Boys' who are men,
who sit up aloft where oratory cloys,
And 'graft' night and day with tireless pen,
Sing Ho! for the Gallery Boys!

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

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The parliamentary press gallery, 1906

The press gallery above the Speaker's chair, 1906

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library,
Reference: F11859 1/2 A
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Panorama: Debating Chamber galleries

Panorama of the galleries of the debating chamber of the House of Representatives.

Members of the public sit here, as well as members of the press. The wooden decorations around the base of the gallery commemorate major battles in which New Zealanders fought in wartime. The green wreaths are made of bronze and were erected in 1993 to mark 100 years of women having the vote in New Zealand.

Related commentary by John O'Sullivan, former General Manager of the Parliamentary Service

(Click on arrow to play 240kb)

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Transcript

Here we view the floor of the debating chamber and the layout of the seating from one of the public galleries in the House of Representatives. The gallery immediately above the Speaker's chair is the press gallery and the other public gallery is to the right. Moving further to the right we come to the Speaker's gallery which is opposite the Speaker's chair. Seating in the Speaker's gallery is reserved for special pass holders. The u-shaped form of the seating layout of the member's desks on the floor of the House is clearly evident as is the Table of the House, on which papers are laid when they are formally tabled in Parliament. Also the stand for the mace at the end of the table is visible; similarly you can see the seating for the Clerk of the House and his assistants immediately below the rostrum area below the Speaker's chair.

These panoramas require QuickTime 5 or later to view.
A grid will appear while this movie downloads (about 1-2 mins on a 56k dial-up connection). Once this disappears the movie has downloaded and, with the mouse pointer inside the image, click and drag to explore.

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Front page of Crete News

Not long after his arrival in Crete, Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Cox, a successful journalist, was ordered to report to Creforce’s commander, Major-General Bernard Freyberg. Freyberg wanted Cox to write a paper to boost morale among the troops and gave him five days to produce it. The first issue of Cox’s ill-fated Crete News paper was published on 16 May 1941. Copies of the fourth and final issue, published on 24 May, were retrieved just moments before a bomb scored a direct hit on the presses at the printer’s shop in Canea.

Read Geoffrey Cox’s biography here

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: DA-06854
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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