The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-08-30
TWO SORTS OF LIES,

its motives may be plausibly impugned, or its
accuracy questioned, its influence is weakened
or lost. The most cogent argument ever
rnade will lose its force on a man who thinks
1t is made from bad or interested motives.
The lawyer whose character most fully as
sures jury that he is in earnest and says
only what he means, is the lawyer who will
carry jury with him all the time, however
shrewd and plausible the opposition. Lord
Bacon's apothegm that can assertion is like
long bow that shoots the harder as the strength
OF the bowman is greater, but an argument is
Ike cross bow, that shoots with equal force
shether discharged by giant or a child" is
IN some degree sound, but not wholly. An
argument is more like an assertion than he
thinks, in its dependence for force on conf
dence in the man who uses it. The world
moves very much more closely in the direction
Of confidence than logic, and the man who is
trnsted will do the ruling all the time against
man who may be impregnable in logic.
Wherefore we say again that the press is
powerful in proportion to the confidence felt
In its honesty and correctness. Ability is
smaller factor in it's influence than the general
belief that it never says anything insincerely
or incorrectly.
When some adventurous reporter attempts
a hoax which, on its face, is plausible and
likely to be generally believed, he commits
crime against his profession for which he
ought to be expelled from it and punished by
legal enactment. 4 newspaper lie is not a
private "blow-in-my- lug lie. AS Thackeray
Gays of tie criticism Of his ''Kckeburys," in
The London Times "a man can't be abused in
the Times and pretend that nobody knows it."
What is said in q paper is preached from the
house-tops and rung from the church steeples
IL 1t is only deception as to news, that dis
turbs nobody's peace, affects nobody's bust
ness, stirs nobody's temper; still it is a break
in the integrity of the press that makes the
public more likely to distrust all that is said,
interest-an effect that will surely react on
business and be felt in the bank account. It
is an indirect robbery as we'll as direct forgery
and the statute should punish it with fine and
Imprisonment. Libel suits are no reparaton
for the injury does not affect individual credit
and the deceived papers have no ground for
al I
any lie about them could damage them, by a
lis inserted in them that merely fools the
readers. Yet they have no ground for claim
of damages. They have been swindled, but
not libeled, and for swinde of that charac-
ter the law has made no provision. The pa
per is at once the victim of swindle and an
innocent swindler.
We have been led into these suggestions by
two or three recent falsehoods Of more than
usual 'conspicuity. A short time ago there
came from San Francisco report by tele-
graph that Maxwell had disclosed his line of
defense in the assertion that Preller was liv-
ing, and the corpse found was that of ''stiff'
procured for the occasion. 1t was whole lie.
IT seems now as if that would be the actual
line of defense, but it wasn't then Maxwell
had made no statement at ALL A reporter had
manufactured the whole affair. Now, the lie
hurt nobody that read it, for it didn't con-
Germ them in the least whether there was
such defense or a combination of facts to
sustain it or not. But it hurt the character
of the press reports. If so plausible a state
ment were a mendacious manufacture, what
statement of the press could be trusted? It
was a crime against the fourth estate and the
supremacy of truth. Again, a letter of Mr..
Baysrd concerning the Kelley case was pa
raded in the press dispatches. 1t was q
forgery, out and out. But who could suspect
it, when it fitted its place so APPLY? Again,
but q few days ago we had the story of a big
boned yeo,nan of Montgomery county who
conquered three burglars, tied them, took
them to the woods, hitched them up to tree
and cave them each q hundred lashes with
SWITCH. II Was Il lIC NOIH-
ing of the kind ever occurred The inventor
OF it is a criminal against public trust in the
sources of its daily information, swindler
not one whit better morally, and only by mis-
chance less guilty legally, than the forger of
check.
No one needs to be told that such things as
these must injure confidence in the press. 1t
Is unjust for the press is no less victim than
the public, but it is made the agent of an in
finitely wider deception, and suffers as any de-
tscted deceiver must 1t is not probable that
any paper has lost reader from the exposed
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