The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1855-09-03

TELEGRApHIc News, REPORTERS AND PtErI-
san EpiToRs.-Some Of our contemporaries seem
recently to have imbihed new and strange
notions concerning the duties of telegraphie
reporters. Hitherto it has been generally
understood that the province of such reporters
was to send to their employers true and IN
BIASED accounts Of whatever transactions OF
interest came under their notice in their inn
mediate localities. They were expected to
state events just as they occurred, without re-
gard to the bearing, political or otherwise Of
the particular information they were convey
ing and without stopping to consider whether
they could not so word their dispatches as not
10 offend by the truthfulness of their language
the attaches of some excessively squeamish jour-
nal within the circle of the Association This
requirement from them on the part of the
Association was rendered the more necessary,
by the fact that the Associated Press is COM
posed of journals Of all shades Of politics and
opinions; SO that any attempt on the part of
the reporter, if he should be disposed to make
one, to render his labors more acceptable to
some particular journal, by falling in with its
peculiar isms, or ministering to it's violent pre-
JUDGES, at the expense Of all the other journals
in the Association, would cause instant and
general dissatisfac ton. But, as we have
already intmated, q few of our contemporaries
seem to have recently received new light on
this subject, and are beginning to kick against
this we'll understood relation of the agents of
the press to their employers and they have,
accordingly, commenced the hunting down of
certain gentlemen in the employ of the press
who do not see fit to prostitute their oppor-
tunities for the qualification of insignificant
sectional parties or cliques. They say, in
effect, to these gentlemen" either so con-
struct yGAlr reports, by garnishing or suppress
sion, Or direct or covert falsehood, as not to
offend the idiosynoracies and prejudices Of our
editors and readers, or we will drive yon from
your employment All this is manifestly
wrong If what reporter sends to us be facts
If he has told us nothing but the truth, and
has told us the whole truth so far as it came to
his knowledge--we hold that he has done his
duty, and his whole duty, whatever party: or
class, or faction, or ism may have been I'M
pleasantly compromised by those facts; and all
fair-mnded and literally disposed editors will
acquiesce in this conclusion
One of the cases of persecution to which we
have alluded, is that Of the reporter Of the As
ISOLATED Press at Louisville. That gentleman
prepared and sent over the wires the facts OF
the late riots. such as he was enabled to learn
on the spot at the instant, and amidst the in
Of no;
quent investigation by the City Councils of
Louisville, as well as by private citizens, have
proved beyond doubt that his first reports Of
that affair were remarkably correct. But the
tone of bis dispatches, truthful as they were,
did not happen to suit the prejudices of that
portion Of the press to which we have alluded,
and hence they have opened their columns
upon him in stream Of abuse and dcnuncia-
ton that is evidently intended to drive him
from his position. They first accuse him Of
being a Know Nothing, without particle of
evidence to prove their accusation, but evil
IDENTIFY with the purpose Of creating parti-
san feeling against him and then charge
him with having coored and even fall
sifcd his reports to snit his own Pc
litical prejudices, when the evidence subse-
quently ELECTED, as we have already shown,
and as those editors well knew, proved that
his statements were, in The main. correct. One
point on which the most stress is laid is the
fact stated in the Louisville report, that % the
first shot was fired hy foreigner The evil
dencc brought out at the investigation by the
City Couucil distinctly proves this fact, not
only by the oaths Of respectable American citi-
zens, but by those also Of Irish Catholics them
selves.
But it is not necessary to go into details.
The HERALD has already given. in ample pro-
fusion the various reports Of those riots, CO.
pied from papers in the interest of both par
ties, and our readers have, doubtless, drawn
their own conclusions from the premises. We
repeat, the general accuracy Of the correspon-
dents reports arc fully substantated in those
details and this assertion cannot be contro-
verted OF denied without doing violence to the
truth
We are moi personally acquainted with the
gentleman who holds the situation of reporter
TO the press at Louisville: but we know that
his position is responsible one, and one such
as no nan who is not capable Of having opin-
ions Of his own should occupy and We con-
tend that, whether those opinions lean TO the
Know Nothings Or to The Sag-Nichts-to hun
kcrism or free soilery-to white-coated philoso-
sorhy or red bearded inl!deity--so long a. h.
does liz duty faithfully and impartaIy, a. We
believe he did do il the matter of the Louis
Vile riots he should be exempted from unme-
rited a-use at the bands of those Who employ
him.
Our captions contemporaries ought 70 know
that it is much easier TO drive q capable man
from q responsible situation than Il i 10 lind
another capable man who will be willing to
take tie place Oh the terms which the unjust
treatment Of the former incumbent would seem
Ia iuplv