CHAPTER LIV
THE PRESS AND CRIME
You guess that this chapter will show how the press
exploits crime for its profit; and that sounds tiresome, you
know all about that. You know how the yellow journals take
up murder cases and divorce cases and sexual irregularities,
and carry on campaigns of scandal, lasting for months. You
know how they send out their amateur sleuths, and work up a
case against some one, and make it a matter of journalistic
prestige that this person shall be hounded to jail.
No; this chapter does not deal with the crimes which the press exploits, nor yet with the crimes which it invents. I could tell a hilarious anecdote of a group of New York reporters assigned to the immigration service, shy of news and bored to death, who cooked up a tale of an imaginary murder by an imaginary Austrian countess, kept all New York thrilled for a week, and "got away with it." But all that is comparatively nothing. The theme of this chapter is the crimes which the press commits.
What is a crime? The definition is difficult; you have to know first who commits it. Many things are crimes if done by workingmen, which are virtuous public services if done by great corporations. It is a crime when workingmen conspire to boycott; but it is no crime when newspapers do it, when advertisers do it. It is a crime when an individual threatens blackmail; but when a great newspaper does it, it is business enterprise. For example, in Los Angeles there was started a municipal newspaper, which was thriving. Gen. Harrison Gray Otis of the "Times" sent agents to various advertisers to notify them that if they continued to advertise in this paper they would be boycotted, black-listed, and put out of business. So the big advertisers deserted the municipal paper.
I have told in this book about many crimes committed by newspapers against myself; not metaphorical crimes, but literal, legal crimes. It was a crime when a Philadelphia reporter broke into my home and stole a photograph. It was a crime when the "New York Evening Journal" sent forged cable-
