are literally hundreds of hearsays and opinions! For example, the miners are threatening trouble, and "it is thought that on account of this situation the martial law zone may have to be extended." Again: "In some quarters the opinion was expressed that the miners had retired into the mountains." Again: "All the prisoners, it was reported, have been removed from box-cars and were being made as comfortable as possible." Again: "This afternoon there was considerable shooting at Holly Grove. It is said that men employed in the mines were accosted by strikers." Again: "Armed miners have taken possession of the strike territory, according to reports." Such hearsays and opinions as this you find in every other dispatch. Certain testimony is introduced before a commission of the Governor of the State, and the Pittsburgh office of the Associated Press is so in love with hearsays and opinions that it takes some of the evidence introduced and deliberately turns it into hearsay and opinion! I quote one paragraph, first as it was sent in by the correspondent in the field, and second as it was altered in the Pittsburgh office:
The evidence introduced all tends to show that the prices at the
company stores have been much higher than at independent stores,
and that there had been no trouble until the mine-guards were brought
into the district.
According to the miners the prices at the company stores have been much higher than at independent stores. They say there would have been no trouble if the mine-guards had not been brought into the district.
On November 20, 1912, the Charleston correspondent sent
a long dispatch about the fighting, and whole paragraphs of
this dispatch were cut out in the Pittsburgh office. I note that
in these paragraphs were many hearsays and opinions; but I
note that Mr. French's assistants were not content to cut out
the hearsays and opinions—they also cut out the news. Here,
for example, is one paragraph that never saw the light:
During the first period of military control the sympathy, it is
claimed of a majority of the West Virginians, was with the miners.
Since that time many of the union miners have left this section,
taking their families into other coal fields. Then, it is alleged, the
contention was the removal of the mine-guard system maintained by
the coal operators, which had become obnoxious to the miners.
Or these two sentences, cut from the same dispatch:
