REPORTING POLICE COURT CASES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XX, Issue 2101, 9 April 1925, Page 4

REPORTING POLICE COURT CASES.

As this paper has been subjected ,to a certain amount of criticism in some circles in regard to the reports given of police court cases, we would take the opportunity of explaining what is considered to be the duty of a newspaper in this respect. A newspaper has a duty to perform* to the public in exposing crime, but in many cases there are extenuating circumstances connected with some court cases in which the non-publication of names is justified, and discretion must be used in such cases. When a person commits a technical breach of the law it is not always a crime, and there is no disgrace attached to such a breach. In the case of first offenders who appear in court, it is not the practice to publish the names of the accused persons unless the charges are of a serious nature. It has been stated that in some recent 1 court proceedings we suppressed certain names, and we acknowledge that such was the case. Our purpose was not to condone the offences. The cases were not reported because, from the information given, we were led to understand that one at least of those charged was unwittingly an offender against the law, while another was making an effort to retrieve his past. We do not question the fairness of the prosecutions, for they were fully justified under the circumstances, but cannot see the reason of giving publicity to a matter which will serve no other purpose than satisfying a morbid curiosity on the part of a certain section of the community. The offences in question were purely technical ones. The men who committed them are trying to make good, and we leave it to our readers to judge whether we would have acted fairly in publishing their names in these circumstances. We had nothing to gain in not publishing the cases, but when any man is trying to live down an offence of the past, it is not the province of a newspaper to expose him before the public.