INDECENT NEWSPAPERS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXI, Issue 3141, 9 September 1878, Page 4

INDECENT NEWSPAPERS.

The following comments in Week, a London journal, might be advantageously taken to heart by some New Zealand newspapers, more particularly some that are published in Auckland : During the last three or four years a degree of license in chronicling personal gossip has been taken, which has never been exercised with impunity in this country, and will not long be tolerated now. No doubt scurrilouß journals have been known at many former periods of our history, but they had an uneasy life of it, and their fate was not such as to tempt a crown of imitators into the field. All such papers run a certain and well-marked course. At first they surprise and amuse the public. People like to see the names of their friends coupled with some disparaging allusion or anecdote ; and the more names there are mentioned the better the paper sells. But at last the blows begin to rain round too freely. The laughers themselves get hit. People who have perhaps supplied the materials for "spicy articles" are staggered to find that they, too, are called up for punishment. But what is the editor to do IHe must have the usual suply of personal paragraphs. It is not possible for him to spare his friends ; all must be grist that comes to his mill. An ingenious concoctor of these legends of lords and ladies once avowed that he always found it better and easier to make them up out of his own head than to wait for the news to dribble in. But this sometimes may be dangerous work, and it is as well to have a grain of truth in the budget of scandal. It gives it point. If Lord A Bends a little item to-day, he is equally liable to find that his own indiscretions are paraded before the public the following week. The editor himself is scarcely safe ; and indeed we much fear that in such cases his own little slips would bear telling about the least of all. But unless some brother journalist comes out. with the story, it will remain untold. No one likes to bell the cat. Thus the gossipmonger can go on Bhooting his arrows into every household. The end of it is that enemies arise up against the paper in all directions, and tear it to pieces, and the literary garbage-gatherer is ultimately sent adrift with his dirty stalls and offensive wareß.

This, we say, is the end ; but in the present day it takes a long while sometimes to reach the end, and in the meantime the trade grows apace. Each new comer in the field tries to outdo the last — to jump higher and scream louder, to drag in more names of private persons, to tell nastier stories, and to defile still more the tone and character of private life. Any tale which comprises a woman is eagerly sought for. The scavenger who first gets hold of auch a story is Bure of his reward — double pay, and praise from the chief cook and bottle-washer. Last week one of these papers did not scruple to relate a long history, in which not only the good name of one of the Queen's sons was assailed, but his wife was also dragged in, and a private lady was described in a way to which the merest outcast might reasonably object. Whether the story was true or false we know not, but that it should be published without shame, and read with avidity by the public, are facts which prove how little we have to boast of, either with reference to society or the press. No doubt there are many stories afloat about royal princes, for some of which they have to blame their own indiscretion. . In these days, if they make their escapades too notorious, the public is sure to hear of them. The protection of mere rank is getting worth less and less. "But if all the scandal afloat about distinguished personages is to be printed in the newspapers, most people would prefer to omit the names of defenceless women from the anecdotes. The journal to which we have referred not only brought out these names but was careful to announce when the owners of them would arrive in London.