Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-27
NEWSPAPER sCAVENGERS AND THEIR
DEFENSES.

DEFENSES.
The Alta saws: "The Eramiaer insists
that it is the right of newspaper to IN
wade the private home of citizen and
inform the public of his relations to his
family, when those relations have not been
made the subject of judicial inquiry and
have not called for any arbitration, public
or private. True, that paper explains
that scandals of this kind affecting the
rich are always marketable and make the
paper widely read, and it makes new
plea for sensational indecency by the prop
osition that the rich shall in this respect
be treated the same as the poor" The
doctrine of the Examiner then is simply
infamous. In this land the rights OF rich
and poor are equally entitled to the pro-
lection of the law and of society, and
equally are these classes amenable to crItl-
cism. The homes Of both are in theory
their castles, and should be secure from
newspaper assault. But the live" news
paper, so-called, which is the synonym in
these days of slang for the vicious and
nasty sheet, respects neither the right nor
the law.
There is no influence more demoralizing
than this same vicious live" newspaper
ism. We agree with the Alta when it
thus philosophers, " Moralists may well
despair of a community in which the press
is encouraged to tear away the tig-leaf and
boast of its achievements in scandal and
SANDER as evidences Of its enterprise"
But we except to the inference that the
communities in California do encourage
such journalism. The self-respecting, the
decent citizenship of the land is in the
majority. 1t does not, nor ever
has, approved the scurrilous course
that some papers pursue and de-
fend. Decent men with families
are not brutalized, that they approve the
corruption of the tastes and morals oftheir
children by applauding this vicious news
paper literature Even the possible truth
of publication of indecency cannot excuse
either its original presentation, or its quo
tation by other journals. There is too,
something to be accorded mercifully to
the innocent who are always crushed and
wounded by these shafts of cruelty.
iii is foul, filthy and unlawful to pub
lish and circulate the works Of the forbid
den French novelists; in the name of the
commonest decency, what ofense is
it to print far more outspoken and more
poorly dressed filth, more debauching, cor
rupting and suggestive amorous and scan
dalous recitals in the columns of daily
newspaper If it is the Office Of the So
ciety for the Suppression Of Vice to pre-
vent the exhibition in the shops of the
State, of pictures of half-nude women, how
much more is i: its duty to make examples
of the public prints that regularly strip
the mantle of secresy from the revels of
rakes and debauches, and the follies of
debased women, and that in lieu of truth
concoct and print libidi nous tales concern
ing mythical people, simply to crafty the
vicious and depraved minority.
And it is behind this minority that the
so-called dive newspaper fortifes itself,
1t is this minority to which it sells its
filth, that it protests constitutes the
community" demanding daily service of
nastiness. If the men and women of the
homes of the land are half as bad as these
sensational sheets by such plea would have
us believe, then indeed the hour has struck
for the seals to be broken. and the walls of
wrath of offended Deity to be poured out
mercilessly upon a race of men and wo-
men who deserve to be blotted from exist
ence.
But it is not true. The Alta is right
when it declares that the best judgment of
the moral world is against such journalism.
The defendant journals Will never venture
to take issue with the truism. It follows,
therefore that they voluntarily range
themselves in the ranks Of the immoral,
and traffic in smut for greasy coin. They
are, as says our contemporary, moral
burglars" their trade is scandal, their
profits drip with tears, and their Golfers
are stocked with broken hearts. In the
name of the common manhood that honors
its wife, reveres its mother, respects its
sisters, loves its daughters and sons, digni-
fes womanhood with its trust, and prefers
purity and clean tastes and thoughts to
scandal and filth, let the protest be entered
that the communities of California do not
demand or prefer that California journal
ism shall descend to the leyel of the few
police gazettes, posing at respectable Cali
fornia newspapers, that insult them by the
infamous charge. In the same name let