Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-02-08
sCURRILoUs JOURNALISM

The New York Tribune lifts its voice in
indignant protest against the growing
tendency Of a certain order Of journalism
to disregard the privacy OF domestic life
and to make the purely private concerns
of individuals the themes for public con-
sideration. 1t cites as an instance news
paper which lately gave an account of the
appearance of number of women who
are in society in one of our American
cities. Not one of these women is a pub
lie character 1t says: None of them
are charged with the commission of any
ofense. They are all pursuing the even
tenor of their ways in private life. Never
theless, the newspaper turns the sunlight
of publicity upon them, describing them
with coarseness and vulgarity that are
simply abominable Thus one of them is
said to wear gown which tends to con-
ceal her rather awkward figure Another
has a very homely and rather sullen
face A third has an intensely disagree
able expression A fourth has bad fig
ure, and she walks as if she had swal-
lowed an umbrella and it had grown
against her backbone Douglas Jerrold
once said that there were compensations
in all vocations, and that if he were an
undertaken there were some people whom
he could serve professionally with great
satisfaction. What manly undertaken
would not serve professionally with great
satisfaction an editor who had shown him
self capable of maltreating innocent and
defenseless women ?"
Unfortunately there are men in plenty
who deem the possession of types and
presses license to invade privacy and to
parade the private affairs of any family
that greed or viciousness may select. If
there is raised any protesting voice against
this disregard of human rights, the cry
goes up that the freedom of the press
is assailed. When its freedom becomes
license to malign, caricature and lampoon
those who have no way given cause for
being held up to the public gaze, It's time
to reconsider the freedom of the press and
to seriously think upon limitations for it.
True, the law of libel is supposed to afford
the injured adequate remedy. But the
appeal to it is oftener worse for the in
jured party than suffering under the injus-
tice. Probably the best remedy, after all,
for such outrages as the Tribune refers to is
stout lash well welded by the hands of
indignant heads of families.
1t is said by one contemporary COM
menting upon the subject "that the VIC
tins may content themselves with the
consolation that the judgment Of commu-
mites in the end estimates all such jour
nalism at its true value, and that they who
are conscious of their innocence of ofense
need not fear the assaults of sensational
and Paul Pry newspapers" That is true,
but human nature is what it is, and not
what we may wish it to be. Men and
women who are held up to public ridicule
without reason, and whose privacy is laid
open to the world of the curious vulgar,
cannot salve their wounds with such re-
Election, except in rare instances. The
mass of people thus dragged to the public
gaze are sensitive and keenly alive to the
indignity of such treatment.
1t is one Of the anomalies of this order
of journalism that the men who indulge in
it are themselves exceedingly jealous of
such treatment as they administer to 9TH
ers. Let the members of their families be
criticised as in the instance cited by the
Tribune, and they turn with hot indigna-