The Australian Boomerang

Britain's sensational newspapers, which often display a lamentable ignorance in their coverage of the U.S. (TIME, Feb. 2, 1953), last week went one better. They showed the same sort of ignorance of the customs and temperament of the people of the Commonwealth in their coverage of Queen Elizabeth's good-will tour of Australia and New Zealand. In reporting on the warm, enthusiastic reception Australians gave the Queen and her party, some of the papers went overboard. After the Australian minister in charge of the royal tour cautioned the crowds not to throw small flags into the royal car and to show "Australian sportsmanship and fair play," some London papers 'treated the warning with scare headlines. GO

EASY! YOU MAY HARM THE QUEEN,

CROWDS TOLD, screamed the London Daily Mirror, biggest daily in the world (circ. 4,132,700). PLEASE AUSTRALIA, YOU

MUST LOOK AFTER THE QUEEN, headlined News of the World, biggest weekly newspaper in the world (8,230,158). The alarmist stories in London newspapers came flying back to Australia with the force of a well-thrown boomerang.

Furphies & Training. As a result, in New Zealand, London newsmen traveling with the Queen were greeted by crowds yelling: "Go home, you pommy [a newcomer from England] liars." Last week in Australia, under the headline CUT IT OUT CHUMS!, the Sydney Daily Telegraph (circ. 310,000) jeered at Fleet Streeters for reporting that the Queen's safety was in danger because of the crowds and the rigors of her tour. Said the Telegraph: "England can disregard these furphies [Australian slang for wild rumors]. The only danger seems to be that the hustling correspondents have had to do may cause them overfatigue due to faulty training. But the Queen, who has been trained for the job, obviously doesn't feel the same strain as apparently besets English journalists puffing in her wake."

The London Economist lent its weight to the Australians' complaint in an article titled "Aboriginals in Fleet Street." "The Queen's otherwise triumphal passage [is being] marred by something for which neither royalty nor antipodean affection can be blamed. The fault [lies] with certain London daily newspapers . . . Several correspondents covering the tour have expressed the hope that they could return at leisure and really learn something. It might pay their employers to help them to do so."

Grass Skirts & Trees. When the Queen was in New Zealand, many a British newsman reported on the country with the open-mouthed naivete of a well-heeled dowager touring the slums. One reporter smugly confessed that she had always thought the Maoris, the civilized descendants of New Zealand's aboriginal tribes, lived in trees. Even the sober London Daily Telegraph said that the Maoris' dances "were rather like a fancy dress ball in a Turkish bath." Most London papers gleefully ridiculed the Maoris for dressing up in the costumes of their ancestors.

The Maoris swiftly reacted. "Let me assure those chosen geniuses of the world's greatest newspapers," said a Maori district council chairman, "that if we Maoris have to be the butts of a cockney's cackle between pints of mild or half-and-half, we shall bear up ... We are not a backward, indolent people content to sit in the sun and sing. On equal terms with the European we have had a Maori Cabinet minister, Maori scientists of world standing, doctors, dentists, business executives--even Maori pressmen, although fortunately we do not often descend so far."

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