The record-union., 1895-10-31
DEPRAvITY OF JOURNALISM.
Reached Its Lowest Depths in the
Durrant Case.

FROM Tue STOCKTON MAIL.
! Durrant, whether acquitted or con-
victed of the awful crime of which he
stands accused has been subjected to
an extraordinary ordeal. Not only has
he been compelled to answer before the
regularly organized tribunals of bis
country for the murder of Blanche La
mont, but he has had to face an AFRO
CANT, INSCRIPTIONS and infamous IN
QUESTION represented by the San Fran
| cisco newspapers. He has had one trial
under the forms of law and another in
utter disregard of the principles of de-
| cency and justice. One has been III
| progress only since he was arraigned in
! the Superior Court; the other began
! from the hour the bodies of the two girls
were found in the deSecrated church on
Bartlett street. In one he has had the
benefit of the presumption of innocence,
the right to be confronted by witnesses,
| the privilege of being represented by
counsel and all the safeguards to which
| III a free country person accused of
crime is entitled In the other he has
been condemned from the start without
a hearing, put on the rack, tortured by
| gossip mOngerS, lampOOned by carl
caturists and Indignantly assailed by
| SensatiOnalistS.
Nothing in the history of the press of
| San Francisco has SO fully exposed its
! disgraceful methods as its course in
reporting the police and court pro-
ceedings against Theodore Durrant.
The Call may be left out as a cOnspicu-
Gus and honorable exception since that
| journal passed under its new manage
ment. If there be failure of justice
in this celebrated criminal case the re-
srOnsibility for that failure Will have to
be charged to the brutal, vicious and
demOralizing conduct of its city con-
I 3 L.
decency in the news treatment of the
atrocious crime, and of the alleged re-
lations to it of the medical student,
seems to have been ignored by the man.
ayers of those journals ever since the
hour of his arrest. An event of an ex-
ceptionally appalling character,
| which has shocked the moral and
spiritual foundations of society, and
which should have Influenced all right
minded people to contemplate its devel-
opments with horror, has been made by
these managers the occasion for pander-
inG to the morbid appetite for sensation
alism. 1t has been regarded by them as
| a great opportunity to create from day
to day spectacular effects In a gro
! tesque spirit they have attempted to
make sport out of the incidents of the
| crime and the trial of Durrant
Many of the sketches made of the
court, the jury and of the witnesses
| have been drawn in the spirit Of bur
| lesque. AS for the defendant but one
motive seems to have inspired the So
! called artists, and that was to contend
! among themselves to see which could
! draw the most forbidding and brutal
! portrait of him. This rivalry has been
! kept up from week to week until the
/ ideal produced is that of a typical
murderer. Surely the depravity OF
! journalism has no deeper depth than
! that which has been sounded by these
/ papers.
The browning cap-sheaf of press in
| fanny is the obtrusion of the Cunning
| ham woman into the case. This an
drogynous reporter, it may be safe to
say. has in no sense promoted the ends
Of justice. She was detailed to SPY on
| the defendant and eXtort a confession
| from him. That she failed is very clear,
yet we find this vain and ridiculous
! female posing on the witness-stand. try
! ing to swear away the life of a man
whom she had approached in the guise
! OF a good Samaritan. Even the I'M
} scrUpulous newspapers that employed
/ this woman as a dirty hireling seem to
| be ashamed to own her