The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-07-23
POWER OF THE PRESS.
Its splendid opportanlty and lts Im

pressive Responsibility.
 But. to sum up what have been say. ling and to bring 1t .to d conclusion. the
 press has indeed become mighty en-
 zine, but its rapid development has 1 brought with it great abuses. It's chief fault is that, reveiling in the freedom it lenjoys, itshas shown in much too slight
 degree a sense of public responsibili- ty for the use 1t makes of its freedom. The time has come when journalism, In its own and the public interest, should
 become genuine profession, when it should become subject to self-imposed
 ethics, such as govern the other profess sions, and that 1t should not exercise
 unregulated power. For so far as it's relation to the public or the nation is concerned, it Is neither regulated by law nor by anything else than the ca
 price of the conductor of the individual newspaper and by what he considers at | the moment to be his interest. It is for its members to say whether 1t shall be a real institution and one of the most
 powerful in the state whether it shall
 be in fact the fourth estate or whether,
 by being essentially superficial, unreli- able. narrowly patriotic, sensational and
 by doing the work of the scavenger of society, 1t shall sink into contempt.
 The nobility of the work of a calling
 Willelevate those who devote themselves
 to it. Take the profession of medicine.
 Undoubtedly the physicians might
 Haunt their cures, might play with the
 lives Of their patients for their own financial gain and might show the same sort of enterprise that is too often shown by editors. If 1t be said that the
 newspapers give the public that which
 Fit is willing to pay for, and that the re-
 sponsibiiity for the press lies with the people, the quack could make similar plea and if he possessed skill in his calling he might gain wealth by it's de- gradation, But inspired in the mass by the noble ethics which the profession imposes upon itself, we see physicians risking their lives in battle to save,
 while those about them are striving to
 kill; we see them exposing themselves freely to the more deadly perils of in lection, drawing genefously upon their own strength that they may give it to others; we see them, in short, profess sion of heroes. But what sanctions cannot be invoked by the press! h the most splendid piece of prose ever .Writr ten its rights were heroically vindicated by John Milton. They were established by the fiercest battles that were ever fought in the cause of freedom. The press has Garrison proclaifning his message of liberty in defiance of the mob and Lovejoy dying In defence of his printing press. It has had in It's ranks those who have rendered their country service unsurpassed by that of any statesman of their times, and whose fame Is as solid and enduring. No other calling or profession has finer membership. The splendor of it's history, the fertility of it's field of la Dor and the character of the men 1t at tracts to it should, and I believe will, develop a code of professional ethics making impossible some of the abuses committed in it's name. It can restore again what Bagehot calls .the daily play of the higher mind upon the low er," casting the light of the sun upon the doings of the world, and, at the same time, sweetening the atmosphere as the sunshine sWeetens 1t The free dom of the press and the freedom of the people are closely interwovefl, the cause of the one is the cause Of the other. If liberty is to be submerged again, letters imposed upon the souls of men and their honest spoken thoughts made crimes, if the roofs which now cover the freemen of Ameri- ca shall ever shelter race of slaves, 1t will be only when the press shall have proved false to its responsibilities The employment of it's power with the sense of the responsibility which free dom should always confer, devotion to those fundamental principles underly- ing our government, rather than to the transient fortunes of an administration or party, an ambition to see it's courl- try at the head Of the nations of the world, in justice as well as in physical strength, will contribute to make the American press the most potent and the most beneficent of all the forces in the American commonwealth.- ddress of Hon. Samuel w Mccall before the Phi Beta Kappa.