lic interest to a greater or less degree. The courts are a legitimate source of news and the records are open to reporters as to all other persons. No newspaper can act as judge and jury and determine before trial the justice or injustice of a complaint. There are only two fair courses open to a newspaper. Either all cases should be ignored or all should be reported. Should a newspaper refuse or neglect to publish legitimate news, it would soon lose its reader interest. The only course left is to report all cases for whatever news value they have without discriminating for or against anyone. This course the Budget religiously follows and its publishers in the more than 15 years they have followed their profession have not deviated from it.
The position of the Budget is supported by the Oregon Code of Ethics for Journalism recently adopted at a conference of publishers at the University of Oregon. A part of Section III of that code reads: "We will deal by all persons alike so far as is humanly possible, not varying from the procedure of any part of this code because of the wealth, influence or personal situation of the persons concerned."
Because complainants give but one side of a case and because the allegations made by lawyers are too often exaggerated or without much foundation, the Budget makes a practice of not "playing up" or publishing in detail the story told in the complaint unless it has supporting knowledge of the facts gained from other sources. Moreover, the Budget is always willing to print the other side of the case when it is available, and this consideration will always be given as a matter of fairness.
Threats of libel suits, withdrawal of patronage or other reprisals are entirely unnecessary and sometimes defeat their own ends. Inaccuracies, errors and misstatement of facts will be as readily corrected, and all papers will make them in spite of every ef fort and precaution to avoid them.
Personal journalism, wherein the views, the prejudices and the passions of the editor color the news accounts and control the news policies, is long out of date. The Budget at least is not being published to protect its friends or persecute its enemies, and it is not employing its power of publicity to coerce any person into patronizing its commercial departments. Neither does it permit those who do pay money into its cash drawers for subscriptions. advertisements or job printing to dictate in any way what shall be put in its news and editorial columns and what shall be kept out.
Such a policy is the right policy, and none can honestly deny it, and, moreover, it is the policy that will win success for a newspaper. The publishers of the Budget have demonstrated it to their satisfaction over a period of years. It may occasion some temporary losses of business, but such losses are greatly outweighed by the respect and confidence such a policy develops in the reading public. and this respect and confidence must always be the basic asset of a newspaper.
The converse policy is what breeds radicals and revolutionaries. A paper that will deliberately deny a poor man the same consideration that the wealthy man receives, that will make fish of one and flesh of another, is false to its duties and obligations and is lending color to the inflammatory indictment made by radical writers against the American press, charging that the newspapers are creatures of "the interests" and are branded with the dollar mark.
So the Budget will adhere to its established policy, regardless of the unpleasant tasks such a policy sometimes demands, regardless of penalties it sometimes draws and regardless of conflicting policies which any of its contemporaries might have. It has an unshaken confidence in such a policy as one that is not only morally right but one that is commercially right, for the rule of the "square deal" applies just as much to a newspaper as to any other line of business or profession.
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