NEWSPAPER ESPIONAGE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 772, 17 December 1886, Page 8

NEWSPAPER ESPIONAGE.

The New York Forum for August has an interesting article on the offensiveness of personal journalism in America. After describing the manner in which the President and his bride were recently harried by reporters, the writer asks what would have been the public verdict if these pressmen had been private persons, and pertinently demands why a newspaper should not be governed by the same principles which a gentleman follows in his private conduct, and then quotes the following letter sent to an editor by a merchant, complaining of an article on his daughter's private marriage which the former had published :—No newspaper has a right to print broadcast a matter which belongs to my hearthstone. When a blow is struck at my breast, when I am prostrated with grief, it is an outrage on me as a citizen to have dragged into print a story which I had kept to myself. I do not believe that the American people want their newspapers to do things of this kind.’ Will some newspaper (says the author) which is daily practising this kind of journalism reply to that, and at the same time answer the question about gentlemanly conduct which I have put before it? The only responses which I have seen made to criticism like mine have been, first : ‘ The people like news of this kind and it pays to publish it, it being the newspaper’s business to give the people what they want.’ Second : ‘The authors of such criticisms are dudes.’ Third : * If you think your profession is not good enough for you why don’t you get out of it ?’ If the first of these be accepted in its full meaning, that journalism is a profession in which it is allowable to do anything that pays, then there is no room for discussion. The profession becomes the lowest of human calling-lower than brothel-keeping or liquor selling, for these make no pretence to respectability, while the journalist pretends to be a public guide and teacher ; and the spectacle which he fpresents, peddling out moral precepts with one hand, and scandal, vulgar gossip, and family secrets with the other, is most revolting- The argument that >'t pays, because people want it, covers equally well the printing and selling o? ob* sene books and pictures. That sort of trade pays so well that it is necessary to prohibit it by strict penal laws. If a newspaper can do anything that pays, then journalism becomes among all professedly respectable callings the only one whose members, tacitly at least, admit that ; in their professional conduct they are not * governed by the same principles which a gentleman follows in his personal conduct.’ It is natural and fitting that men who take this view of their profession should answer all criticism with personal abuse. What evidence have we that this kind of journalism does pay ? I have been able to find none. Is any respectable paper which practises it prepared to show that its prosperity is greater with it than it would be without it ? That there is a large class of people who are pleased with news of this kind nobody denies, but are not the respectable people of this country a majority and have they no rights ? Shall all our newspapers become peddlers of scandal and impertinence because a portion of the public like those things? Why not let the vulgar and ill-bred people have their own newspapers and give decent people theirs also? Are the American people, alone among the civilised nations of the earth, to be treated by their newspapers as if they were all blackguards? No other journalism in the world has ever made the experiment which is being made here now, and I am too patriotic an American to believe that it can succeed. The newspapers themselves will soon discover the mistake they are making. They will perceive it first in the weakening of their own editorial influence. It is impossible to make the functions of scandalmonger and moral guide work successfully together. A newspaper which goes into a household with its first page given up to vulgar gossip, scandal, and crime, laboriously gathered from all parts of the world, must expect to find its observations upon the proper conduct of public and private affairs attracting less attention. It is as if a sage of a village were to go into a household to give council upon some question of conduct, and before giving it should say : ‘ Oh, by the way, as I was coming here I crawled through neighbour Smith’s fence, and peeping through his window, discovered so and so.’ What would his council be worth after that ? How, to take an extreme view of the case, can a man be influenced by the editorial utterances of a newspaper whose columns are so objectionable that he is unwilling to leave the paper where his wife and children may see it? Why, in other words, should a newspaper bring into a household matters which it would be impossible for any decent person even to mention there ? The paper which does it must inevitably be denied admission, sooner or latter. Then, too, consider for a moment what the influence is to be upon the future of the profession ! what kind of young men will be drawn to it if this meddling, prying style becomes the rule? But I firmly believe that it will not become the rule. I do not believe that even a majority of the editors of to-day are in favor of it. Many of the most influential of our journals have already protested against it, and the very ones that are the most zealous advocates of the system will not be long in finding out their mistake. It is a libel upon the American people %o assume that they will long tolerate a kind of journalism which makes the ideal newspaper not a public benefit but a public nuisance. They will insist upon it that the newspaper has some other purpose in the world than to amuse and entertain the thoughtless and vicious ; they

will insist that the duty of selecting goes hand in hand with the duty of collecting the news ; and sooner or later they will make it appear even to the most undudish of editors that it is not true that indecency ‘ pays ’ better than decency, but that in journalism, as in every other reputable calling, the honorable, self-respecting course is the only one that ‘ pays ’ in the long run.