The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-05-23
Rutland Herald.l
The Press and the Public.

The Cleveland Leader recently gave an ac-
count of penny sheet lately started by two
men named Scripps and Sweeney in that city.
The Leader says that gentleman having re-
monstrated with one of the proprietors of this
new Cleveland paper for pursuing the course
of attacking innocent people, the reply was
that he was under the necessity of following
such policy in order to get circulation, and
that after success had come he would then try
and make respectable journal of it. An
"art gallery" is a conspicuous feature of the
paper, and one citizen after another is being
shown up in it in ridiculous and contempti-
BILE light. Newspapers of the sort described
above are not unknown even in Vermont. We
recall one that in 1873 malicously delineated
in its ''art gallery no less man than ex-Gov-
ernor Proctor as a sort of Shylock in his deal
ings with his workmen, and wickedly dubbed
him "Lord Leitrim." And yet this sort of
scandaous journalism that so atrociously
abused this able Governor, is not ineffective,
for the journal referred to is supported to
large extent by the very class of men who as
sumo to rebuke the Vermont press for its slow
tone,' for ''its lack of independence" while
they are weak enough to sustain a paper
whose only enterprise is its keen pursuit Of
obscenity, whose only religion is the radical
ism Of ribaldry, and whose only independence
is an habitual defiance of public decency. The
reason why such journals are supported by
the oracular advocates of press reform is be-
cause the oracular advocates are either hypo-
critics or moral cowards they are either insin-
cere in their pretended disgust for the ditch
water they continue to drink or they are
afraid of the mud machine they may pre-.
tend to despise. The leading Democratic pa
per of Vermont has large Republican sup
port of respectable persons, who admit that
they chad rather take it than be abused by it."
and if this is the true reason it is nothing but
frank confession that they have not charac-
ter enough left to indure the impact of a rot
ten egg that ought not to alarm innocence, or
that they are too timd to live up to their best
convictions when placed under the merciless
fire of bull-dozing journal.
A man who will denounce q newspaper as
both systematically indecent and untruthfu
and yet always subscribe for it, had better
close his mouth on the subject of higher meth
DDS of journalism. A man who takes q news
paper because he is weak or wicked enough TO
fear its gun and wishes to spike it by secretly
supporting the very form of journalism that he
pretends to despise. is very poor creature, but
he is to our certain knowledge very common
creature. The press owes much TO the public
but that part of the public that deem them
selves the representatives of advanced thought
and Intelligence, who are in favor of nobler
manners and purer laws, owe something to
the press and to themselves. They owe it to
the press, whom they ask with Owlish solemni-
ty the question why is not the press nobler in
its aims and more decent in its conduct, to
stop supporting newspapers whose spirit they
pl letend to spurn, to defy the denunciaton and
hostility of those whose methods they describe
as outrageous. libellous, untruthful and OBJ
scene. Does any man suppose a newspaper
will rise above the dialect of the ditch, the
gossip of the gutter, the politics of a police ga
zette when it finds that these things tickle
those who think they stand at the top OF socie-
ty just as keenly as those whom we know wal
low at the bottom? No; your ribald newspaper
will always be ribald just so long as it finds
that even the righteous who feel fit to call sin
ners to repentance, sneer at it on the sidewalk
and subscribe for it in secret. The public that
bellows for purer press can always make
the press what it chooses; it can always make
its choice between journals Of good
report and evil report; it can choose whether to
encourage an editor to act up to the best that
is in him or to live forever on the lowest levels
of his calling, but when this public has male
i.s it Ghoice let 1t be manly enough to stand by
Of aaass set hat IA sih ff has sj oyer the ssryty
let it stop pretending to be in passion over
the quality of paper it has elected to support
in secret, while it Sneers at 1t upon the side
it. The honest man, who cannot afford to be
abused by disreputable newspaper, had best
review his honesty, for his action casts suspic-
ion on his conscience; the innocent man who
fears gutter-snipe armed with rotten egg,
is suggestive of the Sinking life and motion of
a serpent and the painted innocence of a soiled
dove. Let no man pretend that he cannot af-
ford to have a bad newspaper abuse him as an
excuse for supporting it, for a man who cannot
afford to have bad newspaper abuse him is
worthy OF the abuse he avoids; his very moral
cowardice indicts his conscience and impugas
his conduct. If he takes wicked paper it is
either because he likes it, because he is as vul-
gar and coarse as the paper, or because he fears
lest tdrag to light some dark passage of his
history and place him in pillory by publishing
his shame. No honest man, no innocent man,
need pay "moral blackmaiP' by subscribing
for an immoral paper The only persons that
need be afraid of such papers are those who
have lost their heads through the cowardice
that guilty conscience brings home to all.
Nasty corrupt papers live upon the suffrages
of those who sincerely relish ribaldry and
falsehood, or upon those who are cowardly be-
cause they are corrupt; it is nothing but the
pickpocket's dread of the detective, who has
himself the temperament of thief.