The Daily News MONDAY. FEBRUARY 17, 1913. JOURNALISTIC ETIQUETTE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 230, 17 February 1913, Page 4

The Daily News MONDAY. FEBRUARY JOURNALISTIC ETIQUETTE.

ii there is one tiling in the world that tlif ;i\ ciMui' newspaper man loves it is In net a "-roup" oil his eon temporaries. It was well-known in every newspaper Nl ' w tliat the story of llie I'olar expedition had been solil to a London journal, and that this copvrieiit vmiltl iiul expire until twenty-four hours atler the message was despatched from Ihe Dominion, and in the face of this it \'oiihl have lieert imagined that the two members ol tli . expedition who came a-liore at llaniaru would have been let j alone, fur even the onlinarv reporter, with all 11is disabilities, must have known that these uentlemen, beiti# pledged lo secrecy. would not open their mouths concerning the dointrs of the expedition. Instead of this the two officers appear to have been shadowed from the moment of (heir arrival, am! the newspaper men were prepared apparently to eavesdrop, or to sandbag the ollieers or 1c do any morlal thin# tn pet some information. One Chi'istchuivh scribe teleffraplied ihat "it is understood that the expedition has returned in the best of health, and that no accidents marred its successful attack upon the Pole." In the ]i(i'h( of later information this was a terribly had jjtiesc to have been sent out

stiiii-authoritatively. anil it simply shows that the keener tin 1 journalistic competiiion' the less reliable the news. But ' there is a worse feature than this in the exploitation of the Polar .story. It was circumstantially stated in one of the Christehurch papers that there had been serious dissension* anions the stall' during the expedition South, and that. PcttyOllicer Evans had not died from exposure hut had gone mad and thus delayed the return of the southern parly. Having deliberately made these statements, it appears to have suddenly dawned upon our contemporary that it might, be as well to verify tliein from Lieut, (.'ampbell. The result was all unqualified denial of both charges, a denial that was both dignified and indignant. According to Lieutenant Campbell there is not one trilling suggestion of truth in either of these .statements, which, however, were telegraphed hy the Press Association all round the country before they had been verified. Wo should have thought that the proper journalistic course to pursue would have been to interview the commander of the expedition before publishing the paragraphs instead of afterwards. This does not appear to have struck our contemporary in the lirst instance, unless the obvious necessity was ignored for purely commercial reasons, lint this sort of incident is not calculated to raise the calibre of journalism in New Zealand. We do not want American methods, even where competition is keenest, and this quarrelling over dead men's bones is not calculated to increase the prestige of the profession. Had there been anything in either of the rumors circulated, we could have depended upon Lieutenant Campbell to state the truth. As it is, the llat denial will take some time to overtake the original lie. It is the one regrettable incident attaching to the return of the Polar expedition, and it is the more regrettable because it came from the press. We want ihe story, and the whole story, of the expedition, but we want if with some degree of fidelity, and this idle and irresponsible guessing is not going to do the newspaper world the slightest good. Christehurch has made itself fairlj ridiculous with some o f its messages, and we hope that we, ha 'e now heard the; last of a series of silly rumors that had absolutely no foundation in fact. Let us be journalists—and enterprising journalists—hut for our sake let lis at least be honest in otir journalism.