DEPRAVED JOURNALISM.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 163, 27 October 1883, Page 4

DEPRAVED JOURNALISM.

The traveller in a benighted bucolic country district in New Zealand conatantlj meets some seedy-looking, hungry, hollow-eyed wretch, redolent of beer and tobacco. He loafs about the door of the bush pub., and scratches bis back against the verandah-posts. He sniffs out visitors, and interviews them in the hope of getting a gratuitous drink. He is generally on nodding terms with some great cockatoo farmer, and on speaking terms with the local publican and barmaid, if the place is sufficiently populous and the business good enough to warrant the latter attraction. Therefore he becomes pompous, impressed •with an awful consciousness of the mighty power of the Press, of the grandeur of his own intellect, and the vanity and insignificance of everything else in general except big turnips and gooseberries. When the traveller, curious to know •what new kind of animal it is, makes inquiry, he is informed, in a tone of awe and reverence, that it. is the editor of the local " buster."

It is this kind of creature that afreets a lofty contempt for what he is pleased to term " Society journals." Poor, miserable, literary hacks, dragging out a starvation existence in somo bush town, in whose grass-covered streets little else is to be seen from morning till night but a stray goat and a flock of geese, would fain pose as the Petroniuses of the day, the arbiters, not only of pleasure and play, but of everything under the sun. 111-informed, uneducated, muddle-headed, "bumptious scribblers, like the editor of the Hawke's Bay Herald, or his compeor of the Thames Evening Star, who can, with the aid of a pocket dictionary, just manage to scrawl out enough to fill a column, or can slash out something -with the shears from the Observer, or any other original paper, make a ridiculous parade of fastidiousness, forsooth !

We know, for example, the editor of one of the papers referred to. If he were to intrude himself upon any civilised community like Auckland, the Inspector of Nuisances would probably run him in, have him disinfected, scrubbed, and his hair shaved. He is a puny, bandy-legged abortion, with long arms reaching, like the clawa of a lobster, below his knees, knarled knuckles, hands covered with coarse shaggy hair, a great ugly head sunk down on his round shoulders, a brutal low forehead, and a face in which low cunning struggles for the mastery with cupidity and nieaaness. It is this sort of ogre that has the consummate impudence to pose as a sweet-scented, delicate aesthete, a standard authority on politeness, good breeding, and the ethics of journalism. Imagine Q,uilp, in "The Old Curiosity Shop," adopting the role of a Chesterfield. The idea is too grotesque. We have never seen the other gorilla in question, but judge from his style of composition that he would be more at home punching bullocks or humping coals than running an obscure little rag.

We have selected these two precious specimens because they belong to the common type of those pretentious humbugs who denounce " Society ptipers " in a penny-a-liner slang which the most "depraved" Society editor would shrink from using. The truth is, it is a mere question of trade jealousy. People grow weary of the everlasting twaddle of the paste and scissors hacks, the dreary waste of stale, dry. indigestible scraps, the wishy-washy namby-pambyism of the brainless noodles who write in such papers as the Hawke's Bay Herald, Thames Star, or GKsborne Facts. They turn with a sigh of relief to the fresh, sparkling, vivacious columns of the Society papers, as tho thirsty, way-worn traveller in tho desert approaches the cool, refreshing rills in green, shady valleys. This makes the bucolic literary hack jealous. The poor, galled jade winces when his subscribers laugh over some bon mot in tho city contomporary, and with cynical compassion ask the ])oor wretch why he cannot produce something in that style, instead of the daily and weakly drivol which he inflicts upon his long-suffering readers. The Observer, or somo other Society paper, cuts into his circulation and advertising, becauso people residont in country districts, where entertainments, other than littlo tea-guzzles and hob-nail hops, are few and far between, want something to amuse them, and the Observer fills tho bill.

The literary deity feels that his dignity is at stake. He gets as mad as a mangy dog when robbed of a bone. Then he sits down in his old ramshackle three-legged choir, seizes an old stump of a quill, and drivels out a lot of gibberish about *' depraved journalism," but his readers are not so obtuse as to be deceived by the motives. It is a mere vague indictment, unsupported by evidence or quotations. But at the same time these shallow hypocrites have no compunction about publishing in their own columns the filthy details of disgusting cases in our Courts, reports -which the much-abused obnoxious Society paper carefully excludes from its columns.

There is also another reason -why such papers as the Obseeyeb are feared and detested by a few people in poking little village* communities. journals are a social scourge, a moral

nouncing any paragraph in a Society journal which dares to insinuate that Hodge is not an ornament to tho Highway Board, that the mighty genius displayed by Sploggs as a member of the County Council does not fit him for a. Premier's portfolio, or that the energy, vigilance, promptitude, and tact exhibited by Constable Muggins in tho capture of vagrant tykes and foundered " screws" do not render him eminently qualified to take charge of the Channel Fleet. We could point to hundreds of instances in which tho Observer has been instrumental in reconciling husbands and wives, in checking immorality, preventing extortion, and securing justice to the weak and oppressed. Women have thanked us* with tears in their eyes for saving their homes from ruin and desolation, for bringing stray ones back to the fold. Under these cirenmstances we could afford to treat the puling of the puny scribblers with the same contempt as one would the buzzing of a dirty blowfly or a stupid bumble-bee. It is necessary, however, at times to crush or exterminate vermin, and we 'give our detractors notice that in future we shall use the remedy that we possess with an unsparing hand.