The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-01-31
Newsnaners and Crime.

4NCttSRaPC ~
Seventeen thousand women in Californid
signed 3 petition begging the new spapers to
give less space TO criminal news and matters OF
an immoral tendency.
These same women would be the
very first to stop reading a newspaper
which stopped printing the news.
Newspapers are not printed for Sun
day school circulation. They are
records of the daily life of the world,
and are as various in their material
as that life itself.
Properly stated, no current topic
has a criminal or immoral tendency.
We have never seen in a newspaper
of any repute, and never expect to
see a report of a criminal or immoral
event calculated to have criminal or
immoral tendency. On the contrary,
newspaper reports tend inevitably to
check crime and immortality by in
creasing the dread of their conse-
quences.
The fear of publicity is absolutely
the most powerful deterrent from
crime and immortality that exists in
modern life. Remove it, and there
would, at once. be an overwhelming
outbreak of o~ffenses, especially of the
class conventionally described as Fin
moral" Outside of the professional
criminal class, the only idea that ever
enters any ones mind in regard to
crimes short of murder is that they
involve the disgrace of publicity.
Not one person out of five thousand
mas any definite ideas of the legal
penalties of crime, and not one out of
ten thousand has eve thought enough
On the subject to have any realizing
sense of the horror of Imprisonment.
People do know that murder means
hanging, and all can set a mental
value ON that dreadful expiation. But
Ten years in State Prison" or "Eigh-
teen months in the County Jail" has
only the vaguest meaning and the
vaguest terrors for them.
DuO OLOy 11t hAOn oAAoO ~ l1Cot1o w
get their names in the paper. They
all have read the police reports, and
doubtless many a strong temp tation
has been yer come by a mental vision
of a possible newspaper item following
upon detection in the contemplated
act. We believe. indeed, that to the
majority of people no threatened pen
atty is necessary to keep them in the
right path. Terrors are for the weak
and the evil disposed: and we like to
think that, after all, sound average
virtue and good principle prevail in
the world. But for those disposed to
sin, the cons tant threat of exposure is
a most salutary remedy. There is no
knowing, too, when the provocation
may come to even the best man, and
to him in particular does the news
paper penalty appeal with the great
est cogency.
Like every other institution, which
has grown up by natural processes,
d newspaper OF today is sound IN
its constitution and healthily efficient
in its work. It suits the vast major
ity of people, SO long as their minds
are not perverted by the theoreti-
clans and doctYfnGires. The news
paper built to square and measure is
inevitably a failure and an inutllity.
The paper which follows tradition
and evolutes with its age and the peo-
pie for whom it is published, generally
makes its owners fortune and does a
heap of good incidentally. At least.
it knows more about its own busin ess
than any seventeen thousand women,
who were led by the nose by silly
pharisees.
81 H. T $50 E- D.