We took up a “great” morning paper and found a report of a large and powerful meeting held the night before. It was disposed of in five lines, full of blunders. But a row in a slum found a graphic reporter who rejoiced in half a column of unstinted rhetoric. Is it conceivable that persons who have intelligence enough to read newspapers care for the reports of every drunken fight that happens in the lowest parts of the earth? We would not be swift to find fault, and certainly we would not be unjust or censorious; but we are anxious to know if it is not possible to raise the standard—the moral standard of journalism? When we reflect on the mighty possibilities of usefulness in newspapers, read as they are with avidity by millions of people, and when we bear in mind that morals and manners are immensely affected for good or evil by this almost omnipotent agency, we are constrained to ask the attention of those who control it, to their high responsibilities.
We know just where the trouble is, and how easy it is to say, “Must give the news, and make the paper bright, lively, racy, popular.” Yes, make it all that, but make it clean also. Let it be wholesome, pure, elevating. Let us have done with the old devil’s plea that “we must give what the people want; if one paper does not serve up the scandal, they will get one that does.” Thus bad men justify themselves in a thousand things that are wrong. If the people like the evil, let us not pander to their depraved appetites. If others will, let us leave them the profit of it, and they will get their reward.—Observer.