Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1882-10-24
A Tree and Its Fruit.

a brilliant and genial man in the prime
of life and in the full tide of success in
the legal profession, has been shot down
in ST. Louis. 4 wife is made desolate
and six children fatherless by a shot
which the slayer says that he fired in
self defense. The evidence is conflicting
as to the occurrences Immediately pre-
ceding the deadly shot. But the real
cause was personal attack which had
been made upon the victim In the col
umns of the paper of which the SLAYER
was managing editor. No doubt, at the
moment of shooting. Mr. Cockrell thought
that his life was in danger But his
paper had brought that danger upon
him, not merely by attacking
line Of conduct which had led the
victim to denounce it as az assassiR of
private character. Mr.. Cockrell himself is
a gentleman of many amiable qualities, Of
first rate abilities and undoubted charac-
ter-a firm friend and dangerous foe
Those who know him best, and best
know the points of his successful
career, will most profoundly deplore this
lamentable occurrence. How far he may
have been responsible for the conduct Of
the paper on which he was employed
we do not know. This, at any rate, is
clear. The tragedy is another fruit of
what is called personal journalism
that style of journalism which relies for
success more upon faculty for abuse
than upon worth in news gathering or
weight in argument The number
of these tragedies is increasing. San
Francisco was greatly excited by the
De Young Kalloch affair, Washington by
the Soteldo case,. and hardly a week
passes without some affray or duel re-
sulting from some attack upon private
character in a newspaper. The fire.
quency of these disgraceful events is not
an indication that men are growing more
hot tempered or more lawless. 1t results
from the fact that abusive personal jour
nalism has become more common than it
formerly was. In some conspicuous
cases a newspaper conducted in this style
has achieved marked success of a certain
sort. This has led other journalists to
the belief that wellcultivated gift for
vituperation will make paper pay, even
though 1t may not have much else to
recommend it. They reason that the
principal difficulty is to arrest public
attention, and that nothing else arrests it
so quickly or generally as scandal, brutal
personalities, or quarTels that threaten
to ripen into tragedies. 1t is true, to
some extent, that a public taste is neees-
sary to make even the worst sort of jour
nalism possible. Even among intelligent
and law respecting men there far are too
many who read with relish personal at
tacks that pass all decency and tempt to
a disregard of all law Had there been
no public appetite in st. Louis for such
degrading journalism no paper would
have made itself notorious there by its
attacks. If there were no such appetite
here, more than one New York paper
would starve Those who encourage
such papers and keep them alive after
they transgress are directly respon-
bic for the crimes to which they
lead. In community of a different
sort any respectable citizen would feel
quite able to treat with utteF contempt
any journalistic blackguardism what
ever. But where that sort of thing is
relished and made town talk, and con-
sidered to involve mans "honOr" if he
does not get down to the level of his
assailant at once, the wholesome re-
straints of law will be disregarded, foul
words will be answered with clubs and
pistols, and semi i-barbarism will prevail.
Any state of society is less than half
civilized in which it is posssii55iiss for black
guardlsm' really to injure gentleman.
M Slayback may have been entirely
mistaken in supposing that personal
abuse would injure him in st. Louis.
But the prosperity of any rank specimen
of personal journalism in town is un-
favorable evidence as to the state of
society there