The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1901-07-19
NEWSPAPERS AND CRIME.
Harm Done by Yellow Journalism
and Its Remedy.

From the Phlladelphla llmese.
The mayor of western city has jusf
appealed to the editors of the news
papers published with the area under
his jurisdiction to cease the publica-
tion of unnecessary details in regard
to suicides. He believes that many are
led to take their lives through reading
the accounts of how others have ac-
complished self lf-destruction and he is
entirely right in this conclusion. Psy-
biologists and criminologists have es-
tablshed this fact beyond any doubt.
Suggestion is a powerful influence to
turn the mind into one channel or
another, and many a gruesome plor
has been hatChed out of brains that
have been befuddled by some insidious-
y written story in a. yellow journal.
The responsibility of newspapers, which
is always great, is vastly increased
since they are so universally read and
since science is able more or less ac-
curately to guage their influence for
good or for evil and to saddle editors
with their own loads.
In several recent instances associa-
tions of alenists have discussed the
responsibility of the press in reference
| to insanity, crime. and suicide, always
tOllllHS u tllt t'lltluSlOll Nlldl ~ ~
important and great. A brain which
is half-crazed with the troubles and
difficulties of life will often have only
short way to go to thoughts of sui
eide. Men whose minds are disordered
by want and misfortune are often in
duced to try highway robbery. burglary
and abduction by reading accounts
of these things, written up as if they
fin aIN Nnr1er and all
kinds of crime are suggested by news
papers when they are not carefully
conducted with an eye to the general
public interest.
There is a belief among some specu-
| lators in the publishing trade that the
people want highly embellished ac-
counts of crime. The morgues and police
| courts are secured for criminal stories
| and they are often furnished to the
public with picture and phrase that
no reader can escape. They exert
wide reaching and a positively harmful
| influence upon the people. But does
| the public or any large part Of II
| really want this kind Of Journalism:
| There is a demand for the news, of
course, and this il is the duty of every
| good newspaper to supply to its read
| ers day by day. II stands as a clear
| ing house between them and the world
| AT large to collect and report such in
| formation as they ought to possess.
| They ought not to want and ought not
70 have what is harmful to them, and
| should avoid the papers which make
| it a business to publish such matter
as they would some poisonous pest,
That a certain amount of bitter must
go along with the sweet is we'll under
| stood Crime and suicide, when they
| involve prominent persons and in some
way appeal to a legitimate human in
| terest must he recorded in the news
| PAPERS. These things then fall within
| the field of news, but they should al
ways he treated with dignity and with
! the sole view of giving the public the
necessary facts. Superfluous verbiage
| and highly colored touches out of the
| reporters Imagination are unmitigated
| evils. Stories of crime that bring in
| people of no consequence and are
simply printed to satisfy some prurient
and morbid fancy are the curses of the
! time. Crime doubles itself in this way,
| and the newspaper becomes the chief
| agency for propagating it. Self-respect-
| ed people owe it to themselves and to
| society at large to froWn upon this
| kind of journalism by neither buying
| nor reading such newspapers If they
should do this the yellow journal
would soon change its color and dis
appear from the face of the earth.
A Model School.
| Old Gentleman--Do YOU mean to say your
| teachers never trash you:
Little Boy-Ne,er We have moral suasion at
| our school.
| Old Gentlemsn-What's that?
| Little Boy-oh, we're kept in and stood in
] corners, and locked out and locked in. an
| made 10 write word thousand times, an
! scolded at, and that's sll-Detrolt Free Press