Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/366

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

laws to prevent impure food, it has not yet insisted that its food for thought be furnished unadulterated. A generation ago government regulation of railroad rates, foodstuffs, and the size of business combinations would have been regarded as unjustifiable interference with personal liberty. To-day any government interference with newspapers is considered as an attack on the freedom of the press. Is it not possible that the next generation may see every newspaper of this country compelled by public opinion, if not by legislation, to give complete, unbiased reports of all events of general interest?

Questionable Advertisements. As an advertising medium, the newspaper also has an obligation to the community. By giving widespread publicity in their advertising columns to fraudulent investment schemes, dangerous patent nostrums, disreputable medical practitioners, and other objectionable matter, some newspapers, doubtless unintentionally, have aided in grossly deceiving and seriously injuring the reading public that they claimed to serve. For such practices the excuse has been offered that the business of the newspaper is to sell advertising space to any one who will buy it, and that it is not the business of advertising managers and publishers to investigate the truthfulness or moral character of the advertisements that they publish. Realization by newspapers of the fact that by printing objectionable advertising they may cause great harm to their readers has led many of them to reject entirely all forms of questionable advertisement even though to do so has, in some instances, cut off annually from $50,000 to $200,000 of possible revenue.

Honesty in Journalism. The discussion of these various undesirable tendencies in newspaper making, and the presentation of these criticisms of some news-