JOURNALISTIC DIGNITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 224, 10 February 1913, Page 4

JOURNALISTIC DIGNITY.

If is a time-honored experience of journalism that it is easier to be picturesque and aggressive in opposition that it is in defence of the Government, and the Wellington Dominion was not long in I'mding iiiirt out. Unfortunately it mistook arrogance for aggressiveness, and a misrepresentation for criticism, and irtudtlirowing for the cannon of candor. Throughout its short career it has been singularly bitter and resentful against all the members of the late Government party, with a special penchant for Sir Joseph Ward, when it could spare time from belittling its contemporaries, the. New Zealand Times and the Lyttelton Times. Its journalistic methods, indeed, were distinctly American in style and savored quite unpleasantly of those of the Yellow Press. This, of course, cut very little ice with the more responsible papers of the country, who were prepared to accept the mouthings of this new aspirant for journalistic honors with indulgent complacency on a reversal of the principle, "What ill thing have I done that this man should speak good of me" Have for the note of personal vituperation, in fact, the journal was rather 'amusing than otherwise, and those whom it attacked were content to fight its bludgeon with the rapier. Now .that it lias, been jerked by a sudden trick of Fate into power with the Government it is beginning to feel the effects of the journalistic fashion it sought to set itself, and it is engaged in a singularly undignified duel with its local morning contemporary. Probably on the ■principle of the bullock-driver whose bullocks would never work for him unless he swore at them, the New Zealand Times, in criticising its contemporary's manners and methods and the-manners and methods of its party, has adopted the practice laid down by the Dominion and is administering its medicine in the same crude form. This the Dominion bitterly resents, and it has grown almost querulously unhappy under the sting of the lash of abusive criticism. It is. in fact, "taking its gruel" with anything but complacency, and is retorting in a distinctly angry spirit. Perhaps the Times has adopted the only effective method with this scolding shrew of journalism, but at the same time we are sorry to see this undignified interchange of discourtesies. The traditions gf journalism in New Zealand have always been particularly higli, and it has been the pride and pleasure of the members of the Fourth Estate to jealously guard those traditions and justify the appreciations of their profession that have not been confined to their own country. There is nothing more entertaining—and at times instructive—than a newspaper controversy, but it can always be conducted with a reasonable sense of decency, without the use of abuse and vituperation. Abuse is not argument, and bitterness is never bright. Nobody, of course, cares the proverbial "tinker's curse" what the Dominion thinks of the Times or what the Times thinks of the Dominion, but the opinions of these two metropolitan papers upon public matters. when propi'Hv expressed, should be both illuminative and interesting. At present they arc neither. We sincerely hope that the unfortunate example set by the Dominion will not: spread to other centres.