AMERICAN YELLOW PRESS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 652, 18 March 1914, Page 6

AMERICAN YELLOW PRESS.

HOW IT IS VICTIMISED. More than once the American yellow journals have found themselves hoist with) their own petard and tricked into publishing incidents that never had the slightest basis in fact. It is cn record, for c ample, that the editor of one o'f these news agencies conceived one day a wonderfully: plausible story of an attempted,suicide in a fashionable doctor's office, the would-be suicide being: rescued only by the timely intervention of the doctor. The thing never happened, but it might have happened, and he sat down and wrote a realistic account of it. This account he handed to a g'irl on his reporters' staff, telling her to cake it to some prominent doctor and convince him of the numberless advantages, the prodigious acUsrtisemcnt that would accrue to him if only he would endorse the tale.' The first doctor she approached said he could stand a good deal in the way of exaggeration, but that he was not yet educated up to the point cf swearing - to the truth of a story that was an absolute lie. The second, a physician known all over New York, bundled ber out of the house in double-quick time. At the third attempt she was successful. She found a doctor, rnd a well-known one, too, who was delighted with the idea, and gladly closed with her proposal. They went over his consulting-room together ; the c/ord with which the patient had tried to strangle herself during the momentary absence of the doctor, the lounge to she was removed, the restoratives applied, were all agreed ujon. The story was then sent out to the newspaper offices : the doctor, being appealed to by the reporteis, confirmed it in every detail ; and it appeared in the nest morn'ing's papers, three-quarters of a column of soul-moving narrative, with the doctor's photograph and sketch of his consulting-room, and this final paragraph—''Owing to the urgent pleadings of the lady,, Dr. refuses to give the name and address of his patieifti but says she belongs to one of the wealthiest and .nost exclusive social circles in the city. - ' On the whole it v.o.ild not be easy to conceive a deeper - abyss of infamy. It sometimes happened that ingenuity of the sensation-mongers was wasted. When Mr. Henry Miller, for instance, was about to make his first appearance in New York as a star in a new play he received the following letter from the editor of one of these news bureau Dear Sir, —You are probably aware that nowadays it is sensation and not talent that wins. As you are to make your first stellar appearance in New York, it is almost necessary that you do something to attract attention, and ,1 have a scheme to propose. On Sunday night your house will be entered by burglars. They will turn the place upside down, and upon discovery pistol-shots- will be fired. They wili escape, leaving blood-stains upon the floor, "ion will get the credit of fighting singlehanded two desperate robbers. r lhe. New York "Herald" and the oilier morning dailies will get the story, and the whole tov/n will be talking ■ about you. I will furnish the burglars and take all chances, and will only charge 100 dollais lor the scheme. Mr. Miller declined the offer, but it is amazing to discover whither tlia passion' for adveiti:.cn:cnt . m tha* land of advertisement will lead people. 1 I remember seeing in a New York paper a long, article describing a house of Pompeian design, built of glass bricks and glass columns of all colours, that was to be erected at Newport lor a Western millionaire by a firm of well-known city .architects, whose name and address "were given, and who supplied the ra?er with interior and exterior plans of the projected building. It turned out that no sueh freak was ever contemplated, mcl that Ul3 architects, for such advertisement as it would give them, and th? reporter, hungering for a sensation, had conroe ted the tale between them.---Syd-ney Brooks, in the "Fortnightly Review."