AN IMAGINATIVE NEWS AGENT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1141, 19 February 1884, Page 3

AN IMAGINATIVE NEWS AGENT.

Newspaper readers in this country (says a contemporary) often grumble at the shortcomings of Renter, but a recent libel case at Rome shows him in a very favorable light as compared with his com petitors. The Central News Agency brought an action against the proprietors of Judy for libelling it as a “Bogus Telegram Agency,” and a “Chartered L —the L, as the prosecuting counsel plaintively remarked, not meaning libertine but liar. Judy pleaded justification, and called a sub-editor of the Centra News, who admitted that he had expanded a telegram of 12 words received from Montreal, into an account numbering 720 words, which was published in the Daily Telegraph. The telegram ran as follows : Remonski thwarted. Lansdowne movement circuitous. Halifax dynamiters sent trial.” The sub-editor must have been a man of wonderful penetration. From these simple materials he produces two Irish-Americans and named them, discovered a diabolical plot against Lord Lansdowne, who was to be blown up in the Circassian by a band of desperadoes rowing out to it in boats ; another plot to finish that unhappy nobleman by blowing him iq. with a railway bridge ; a cabinet meeting ; and a bitter anti-Irish movement throughout Canada. The whole 720 words bristles with dynamite and infernal machines, and doubtless embittered the strained relations between England and Ireland, The Recorder, before whom the case was tried, remarked that the subeditor’s evidence was that his mind was perfectly saturated with infotmation about plots, dynamite, and when he received the message, and they got into the account when he wrote it. He thought Judy’s remarks were fair criticism. Counsel afores ad asked if it wps fair criticism to call a man a liar. The Recorder was politely explaining that it was the custom to use a paraphrase and not the actual expression, when the jury got tired, and brought in a verdict of “Not Guilty.”