The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1911. EVIL DOING AND NEWSPAPERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 321, 7 June 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1911. EVIL DOING AND NEWSPAPERS.

The average newspaper gives to the public such reading matter as it alleges the public desire to read. One paper is very like another paper in so far as its record of current events is concerned. Its individuality is another thing, but chiefly its mission is to receive and pass on information. In New Zealand there is a general standard, presumably arrived at by a Btudy of what the people desire. They make a demand, and the, demand is supplied. It is frequently alleged that sensation, gloom, murder, sudden death, catastrophe, immorality, scandal, and horrors generally constitute the pabulum the people most desire to read records of, and, this being alleged, papers have sprung into existence in America, especially—that regard anything outside of the category named as unworthy of record. Edward A. Abbott, a United States citizen, has thrown himself into a campaign against the growing mass of daily records of evil doing. His question is, "Does the public want its reading to consist largely of evil doing?" He claims, after investigation, to be able to emphatically answer, "No." Mr. Abbott alleges (and it will be hard to disprove his contention) thai the "yellow" journals are "yellow" because they want to be, and not because the people generally desire them to be. Here is a vivid extract from his writing on the subject: "Do the people desire to know of the domestic sorrows of their neighbors who have done them no harm? Or of the vulgar doings of men and women of whom they have never heard until this morning or last night? Is there a mother who searches the paper for a child's crime or a boy's disgrace, to carry with her until the evening paper brings her the wretched story of some mother's daughter, a thousand miles away, who has fallen by the wayside? The yellow journals say our mothers do want these things. Are the men whose money pays for the making of newspapers, and whose advertisements fill their pages, clamoring for stories of burglary and larceny as a background for their attractive and high-priced publicity? Would a sane storekeeper advise his customers, before coming out to buy, to fill their minds with disgusting details of a Schenk scandal or a Crippen crime? Does the banker expect a boom in his business every time his customers read of a bank failure or a defalcation? Do schools and churches grow best in an atmosphere reeking with the vulgarities of a Thaw trial?" And so on. But the campaigner sets out to prove his contention that the public mind does not glory in festering detail, by just asking the public, which is the only way of discovering what the public thinks. He is a business man in a big way, and has a huge correspondence, so attached to every letter he has

.• "Newspaper people say you want ' murders, horrors, suicide, scandal, vulgarity and death. Did you ever ask for it? Do you want it? If your answer is' No!' tell your paper and tell me." Up to now the campaigner has received no letters answering "Yes." It is pointed out that the yellowest of yellow journals, reeking with horror, still contain noble literature "donning the livery of heaven to serve the devil in." One of the worst features of the growth of American journals largely devoted to unnecessary and foetid details is that the seed has been carefully sown in England. Thus, during the past few years, some English papers have sprung into existence that outdo in "yellowism" their most yellow American contemporaries. One paper recently to hand contained a couple of columns of paragraphs, in each of which monstrous allegations were made against suppositious people, intended, of course, to set the minds of readers to work fitting a criminal to the alleged crime. It will be clear to the average newspaper reader who merely accepts what he is given—, taking the best' offering—that ther'e could be no definite, insistent and general demand for this kind of literary garbage, although its production might easily create a demand among a certain large class of people with obliquity of mental virion. There never has,'been any question that, to people susceptible of easy influence, written suggestions have a baneful effect. The newspaper thai! uses its great trust with an. adequate sense of it? responsibility understands how far-reaching its influence may be, and acts accordingly. To exaggerate the weaknesses of humanity, to pedestal the evil, to throw the sunlight on the unclean js only effective in weakening humanity, strengthening evil, and in increasing uncleanliness. The production of ill literature for the minority of people with oblique mental vision is an accusation that humanity generally has oblique mental vision, and it serves to increase the- number influenced by its means, Means have been taken in some countries to stem the torrent of unnecessary and unclean books, but it is still a moot point whether the careful daily record of some real life facts is not as great an offence and danger as the free dissemination of the neurotic "problem" novel or the record of impossible deeds by impossible "hero" criminals, bo useful in earning a living for writers who believe that the boys' minds should be fed with stories of crime. One simple fact in relation to yellow journalism is that each individual has trouble enough of his own, and his own pet skeleton, without daily gloating over the other fellow's disclosed affairs. If the diurnal washing of the earth's "dirty linen" made it cleaner, yellow journalism might rank as a useful institution. But as it merely makes the earth's dirty linen of i sablcr hue, its evil influence is proved. [f there is a class demand for the record af evil doing, the class should not be :onsidered, in case it gathers recruits, [f humanity in the bulk yells for horrors —givo them horrors. No newspaper man ias ever received a demand for more ion-ore, and the papers dealing solely with the evil side of human nature leal with it because it misreads human lature, The old illustration of the bellvethcr jumping over the cliff, followed >y the mob, is still good. Humanity is rery imitative, and evil fashions have lew devotees every day. When it 'man umps mit of the ranks and* asks tlje'-per-inent question, "Does the public! want ts reading to consist largely of evillomg?" he deserves to win in a camaign that will take longer than his ifetime to fight.