The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-11-18
PRESIDENT AND PRESS.
A Singing Rebuke of President Cleveland's
Studied Insults to the Press.

A Singing Rebuke of President Cleveland's
Studied Insults to the Press.
Rochester Post-Express.
This abuse of the American press has been
repeated 80 often by Mr.. Cleveland that patience
on the part of journalists has ceased to be vir-
tue. 1t makes US, for one, very tired. 1t is
time that the chestnut-bell should be rung with
o snap.
Let it be conceded that the editors of the
United States have plenty of faults and make
plenty of blunders, the fact still remains that
they perform an essential function in a free and
prosperous country where it is necessary for the
people to have full knowledge of public meas
ures, public men, and public methods; where gen.
eral and rapid communication is the life Of bust
ness; where the force and organization of opin-
ion depend upon the facility of intercourse
between distant communities; where progress
in every department requires the quick diffusion
of new intelligence among the masses. In such
a country there must be newspapers and they
must be power both for good and for i'll; and it
is only under stupid despotism that they are
altogether powerless. AS a general rule else
where, it is the public official who has something
to hide that complains of their license, and the
man whose private relations have been anything
but sacred that whines about their Dissertation of
homes.
Constant criticism of the newspapers comes
with especially bad grace from Mr. Cleveland,
for he is their creature, and they made him.
There never was a public man whose reputation
.
and there never was public man who was ad-
vanced so far in popular confidence and political
honor upon so snall capital He is a colossal
example Of what can be done by
judicious advertising He never hit upon
a great idea he never said a great thing; he new
er accomplished a great deed. He was a COM
monplace, honest, well meaning, available man,
unknown outside of narrow circle; and the
newspapers lifted him out of obscurity and put
the governorship and the presidency within his
reach. In his behalf they forgot even their party
animosities. and the Buffalo Express, the New
York Times, Harpers Weekly and the Evening
Post glorifed him not less than the journals of
his own party. making him the representative
and the champion of an idea in politics which he
had not at first thought of representing or cham
pioning. They actually pushed his moral and
intellectual development as we'll as his political
fortunes. And now that he has attained, simply
through newspaper influence, to an honor that
was denied TO men like Webster, Clay. Calhoun,
Chase. Seward. Scott, Tilden, Hancock, Sey.
mour and Mcclellan. he keeps hurting from the
height that makes him conspicuous abuse upon
the newspapers
If a man like Grant, smarting under hostile
and unjust criticism. and remembering the bat
ties and the seges in which, remote from the
scenes of editorial activity, he wrought out the
Nations destiny, should denounce the news
papers we might have patience with him, for
be earned his fame without newspaper help,
aid it is intrusted to the guardianship of his
tory, where the daily press can do no more to
mar than it has done TO make it. II man like
Sherman, irr;tated into anger by journalistic
sneers, and remembering the days when bis