"THE SPOTLIGHT."

Matamata Record, Volume VII, Issue 587, 4 December 1924, Page 5

"THE SPOTLIGHT."

Mark Twain once wrote an article which he headed' with the word " murder," and other lurid terms. He described the scene of the outrage and gave all the sanguinary details. The people read the headlines and a few of the purple passages, and rushed off in great indignation to the ' scene. Had they read the article through with reasonable attention they would have noted that Mark Twain was merely describing a dream that had disturbed his slumbers; no actual crime had occurred. Likewise, some of our good farmer friends out Okauia way who read the previous article under this heading made some rash statements to the effect that we had, in our article purporting to deal with Okauia Hot Springs, treated of only a part of the region. Had they been reasonably observant and noted that the first article was enumerated " No. 1," and that " To be continued," was put at the end of it, they would have saved themselves some expenditure of generous indignation. Let us assure them that we intend to treat the whole area, and not merely a part of it; moreover, what we write will be " off our own bat," and not pirated matter from excellent articles which appeared in the N.Z. Herald fifty years ago. To take the title " Special Commissioner," and then shamelessly flagiarise the larger paper's articles as well, and on top of that to ignore half the Okauia Thermal Region—welO well! " CLEAN JOURNALISM."

A very interesting address was that recently given before the British Institute of Journalists by its president, Mr. Frederick Peaker, M.A A writer in an English press publication refers to it as "I have read every sentence of Mr. Frederick Peaker's address at the annual conference of the Institute of Journalists and congratulate him particularly on those considei-able portions in which he deals with clean journalism. He struck the right note in his previous address from the chair, and from that time forward has maintained his position wisely and persistently. The Institute of Journalists has supported him, and the whole subject has received consideration irom newspaper people to a far greater extent than might have been expected. Mr. Peaker states that he has watched carefully the effect of the stand taken by the Institute in this matter, and in his view no man who has kept his eyes open can doubt that a considerable improvement has been secured. He notes, too, an obviously conscious effort to keep out of newspaper reports things to which serious objection could be taken. But he says there is still wanting a sense of proportion, and he asks the question: ' Is it in accordance with the public interest that over half of what pretends to be a newspaper should be given up to reports of divorce and crime?' He He adds pertinently: ' If, as we believe, we are the permanent guides of the nation, let us guide them to see what is good in the world as well as what is bad.' I am glad to note that Mr. Peaker condemns vigorously a growing practice in a certain type of newspaper enterprise. His references to this matter are as follow: 'The buying up of a condemned man's life story, letting' him make a hero of himself, or the inducing of a condemned man's wife to tell all the intimate details of her life with him, at a big price, for the delectation of the morbid-minded, may be a good thing l for circulation, but is it a good thing for the public welfare or for public moi'als?' The answer in the minds of all honourable journalists must be in the negative." THE REFERENCE. It is obvious, of course, that the reference to " the inducing of a condemned man's wife to tell" refers to the revelation of Mrs. Patrick Mahon, who has recently been publishing (in a London weekly) the base, but bleached, biography of her (compulsorily) deceased husband. The " gentleman" will be long remembered as the slayer of a single woman whom he decoyed to a lonely bungalow on the Sussex sea coast, where, after a few days' occupancy, he killed his paramour and disposed of the remains by means of boiling them in a stewing pan and other culinary operations. A man in " the thirties," it was shown after his arrest that his criminal career had run almost from boyhood, with periods of what might

Ibe termed professional philandering sandwiched in between his convictions. According to the memoirs, how r ever, " Pat" was a model husband, " a little wild " at times perhaps, but still never really doing that other sort of thing, you know. After more or less consistently asserting her belief in her husband's innocence, she comments on his arriving home shortly after Easter of this year—" and to think that ' that' had then been in the bungalow all those days." Talk like this causes one furiously to think. Anyway, no doubt the lady was well paid for the article, so what matter if its sincerity does strike one at times as being a trifle overdone.

VALH, JELLICOE!

By the time this sees print, my Lord Jellicoe will be speeding from these shores. During his four-year term of office, no New Zealand Governor has perhaps been so successful as he. He not only proved wise in counsel and tactful in administration, but he crept into hearts of almost every man, woman and child in the. Dominion in a manner seldom attempted and rarely effected by any of his predecessors. He brought to us a great name —a name won on 1 the high seas of the world and raised by blue-water action—he leaves us with that name still further advanced. It is said of Jellicoe that he was the discovery of Lord Ripon, who appointed his assistant to Fisher as Dh-ector of Ordnance.

" But it required no exceptional gifts of intuition to discover Jellicoe. There is that about this small, alert man, with the clear, frank eye, the tight-lipped mouth that falls away in lines which seem equally ready to | harden with decision or soften with good humour, that commands attention. His face, in Stevenson's phrase, is a certificate. It suggests a spacious, mobile understanding, breadth of judgment, and large reserves of patience, good humour, confidence. He is not formidable with the thunderous gloom of Lord Kitchener or the sardonic lightnings of Lord Fisher. There is about him much more of the quality of French of Ypres, the quality of the plain man, human ancl friendly in Ids attitude to the world, but with his emotions under the control of a firm will; wholly free from vanity or eccentricity, seeing things with a lai-ge simplicity and comprehension, governed not by temperamental moods or inspirations that may be false, but by the calculations of an acute, dispassionate, singularly serene mind. He carries with him what one may call the candour of. the sea, that feeling of a certain elemental directness and veracity common to men who spend their lives far from towns, under a wide sky and in companionship with the great natural forces that do not lie and cannot be deceived." —SPOT.