PRESS AS MIRROR OF LIFE

Shannon News, 21 May 1926, Page 4

PRESS AS MIRROR OF LIFE

An interesting collection of views regarding the way in which the press fulfils its function of reflecting the daily life of its limes is given by public opinion:— "My own view, as a responsible edilor, is that a newspaper is entitled to rellect the age in which we live, with its lights and shadows, and that more harm than good, in public as in private life, may bo done by furtive suppression of ugly facts,” writes Mr. Joseph B. Hobrnan, editor of the Westminster Gazette in the Brotherhood World. “Moreover, this is a franker ago than the Victorian, and I think it is likely to grow still franker. Take the appearance in the newspapers to-day of such subjects as venereal disease and birth control,' which were previously banned, Now they are discussed at such religious gatherings as the Church Congress and C.Q.P E.C. It is said that young people are corrupted by these details but I do not think that ly newspaper can be reduced to the necessity or a, young person it is one of the nrsl duties of the Church and the brotuerhoods to prepare our young peopie for- the pitfalls of life as they are msclosed in the press. "All men and women of all classes and creeds are interested in character and conduct, and in the motives behind deviations from the stratgnt and the virtuous. So long as newspapers do not make vice attractive, but show that the yare departure from the moral code established t>y the nation must bear its consequences that, in short, a man must reap wnatever he sows —otherwise that cnaractor is destiny—l have no fear' tnat; newspapers will be a corrupting agent Public opinion is a salutory thing, and if there is any excess In publicity the pressure of moral reformers, reasonably exerted, will be powerful in restaint. I believe that this has been l the case in eeent months” Miss Mary Borden, too, the wellknown novelist, at a Press Club tune--I tion, in a speech recorded in the Sun-: day Times, said, ‘‘she had often re-, j fleeted, helplessly, on the power of the press, which created for them a neat tabulated world, a world an sorted out, arranged, and marvellously united in beautifully measured portions, of murders, wars, divorces.; . J political crises, racing tips, and me latest thing in solar eclipses and, Paris frocks a world, in a word, exactly suited to their taste. They swallowed it at a gulp every morning with their bacon and eggs, and they were grateful. She would not mini-; misc the great gratitude that they ought to I eel ,and fool, to tne press for this daily act of cosmic, creation. But she sometimes was visited by a haunting thought. Suppose after all that this world was not very much like .what she believed n to be.after reading her paper? Tnat she found a horrid and bothering thought. Between those who write m newspapers and those who write m books there is a perpetual little war; but from time to time there Is an outbreak of sniping from one camp to the other, and the game continues even though journalists leak over freely into the ranks of the novelists,' and bookmakers and the novelists repay the compliment by becoming •publicists’ and writers of ‘special articles.' "As a novelist .Miss Mary Boruen; who was speaking at the Ton don Press Club, says the Manchester Guardiagb "must have decided tnat nothing will induce her to stir outside her own camp, for she drew a picture of herself as admiring the newspapers .hut occasionally haunted by the thought that the world as presented by them-—‘all sorted out, arranged, and marvellously united in

beautifully measured portions’—was not. after all, the world as it really exists. Surely the journalist might reply that, if it is anyone’s job to leave the world, or a selected portion of it. sorted out and displayed in order that:- they may embody one writer's view of our surroundins. K it happens to be tlie view ol' a very groat writer a very important sort of truth will certainly abide in the result. Bui a different, undigested sort of truth also abides in the newspapers from day to day. It is their function to preserve a record of the worKl's events, not necessarily of individual motions to those events. But 300 years lienee, if a novelist of gemus wanted to reconstruct the life of our present times he would certainly handicap himself severely :if he deluded to trust to our fiction for his material and neglected to consult the files of our current press.’ ’