Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-01-16
RECKLESS NEWs-EDITING

The San Francisco Chronicle has been
looked upon as very friendly to Central
and Northern California interests, but
every now and then there appears in its
columns statements that do those sections
injury, because they are unjust, and reck-
lessly edited. The center and north ask
for nothing but the truth to be told, hav-
ing no concealments to make whatever.
When it comes to faL.ehood, they protest.
The trouble with the journal named ap-
pears to be that its news columns are ed
tied inharmoniously with its editorial ex-
preston.
The silly ambition to outdo in sensa-
tional head lines has lead not only the
Chronicle but other San Francisco Journals
to set afoat stories that are untrue and
damaging. For an instance, take the "Ze-
TO-" and the Above Zero" and Below
Zero" head lines to news columns con-
tanning Northern California weather re-
ports. In not one Of those cases did the
dispatches justify the startling captions;
yet tens Of thousands of people read no
more than head lines, or at least fail to
notice the conflict between the head and
body of the column containing a score of
dispatches. Those referred to in that mar
hcular case were very misleading-thev
were dispatches from points of great alti-
tude in the mountain ranges, where the
thermometer reaches zero and below at
some time every year, and has ever since
We have known the State These reports
were, however, mingled indiscriminately
with reports from valley sections, and the
Eastern reader in nine cases out of ten.
being unfamiliar with the location. of our
towns, is led to conclude that the "zero"
dispatches represent the State generally,
and he will be justified in that conclusion
by the Understanding head lines re-
ferred to.
The Chronicle yesterday capped the eli
max of slsurdity and untruthfulness bv
caption-line, reading "The River Frozen
Over at Sacramento The reader of the
three-quarters of column of dispatches
that follow this sensational canton will
search in vain for single word justifying
the headline. Nor could there be any
such word truthfully because the river was
not, is not, and never was frozen over at
Sacramento or anywhere else. The Sacra-
mento river is several hundred miles in
length 1t comes from a northern latitude
and rises in high attitudes where it is not
infrequent for ice to form. There was n
strong cold wind from the north the other
night and occasional thin pieces of ice.
broken probably from the shore or shallow
places far up stream, we're hurried down
the river. Along the shore and about the |
wharves at Sacramento, where the water
washed the backs and piling, ice formed
in thin sheet, as it did throughout the
State from dripping hydrants, and where |
spilled upon the ground. This is all there
was of the river ice story, and all that the
Chronicles dispatches disclose.
The editorial management of tha. Jour
nal needs to exercise fatherly super
vision over its writers of its news heads,
and see TO it that their imagination does
not run away with their judgment. It
Is not at all likely that the Chron icle
or any other metropolitan journal has any
intention of disappearing the central
and northern sections; but intent cuts a
very small figure in the matter so long As
the fact remains that carelessly edited
news departments give false impressions.
We shall expect to see it quoted far and
vide that the Sacramento river in this
cold snap was frozen over at this city and
the San Francisco Chronicle given As au-
thority. Mere item writers and enemies OF
this section will find plausible justifca-
ton for the statement by referring to the
Chronicles headlines, and If confronted
with the contradictory dispatches below
them, could reply, as has been done not
unfrequentiy in similar cases, that the
dispatch On which the caption was based
had been crowded out as it was unlikely
that news editors would put mp head lines
not justified ty information received-sn
assertion that we have shown is not iusti-