The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-09-17
THE NEWSPAPERS RESPONSE
BIDITY.

Responsibility rests on none so
strongly as on the teachers and leaders
of the people who are forming public
opinion, for with them is the task OF
Heading men to see the hideousness OF
sin and the unfailing judgments OF
God.
There is today no factor SO mighty in
its far-reaching power in American
life as the newspaper. I have been in
many homes on the mainland and on
these Islands in which L have seen no
Bible no Prayer Book. no classic in
the English tongue, but 1 have yet to
find a home in which the newspaper
was not present. Those who own, those
who edit, those who patronize the
newspapers have in the sight of God
a tremendous responsibility. Boys and
girls, young men and young women, by
millions are forming their views OF
social and political life from the news
papers. Yes, there are millions who
read nothing else and whose ideas or
virtue and vice. of right and wrong,
are drawn largely from the news
papers.
What stupendous responsibility this
means Well may We ask ourselves:
What ideas of our related life? What
ideas of civic and business life are nlls-
lions of young people getting from the
newspapers, with it's columns full of ac-
counts of murders, adulteries and rob
berries? Are they getting true picture
of human life2 Are they learning from
this, their one supply OF reading mat
ter, anything of the real purpose of
life and it's possibilities? Are they gain
ing any sense # responsibility towards
God. any sense of this unfailing law and
judgment?
Men say this is not the function of
newspaper This, in way, may be
true, but the fact remains thai Journals
which have stood for high and holy
cause and have Influenced million
homes in their struggle for the right as
they saw it have been the great journals
of history. But I am not stating what
the function of newspaper is. 1 am
saying that its possibilities for good or
evil are incalculable and there is
tremendous responsibility for the use of
the power which they possess.
WESTERN PRESS IMPROVED.
am glad to admit that the great
daily papers of the West, from Chicago
to California, of which I know most
have improved immensely since l was
a youth, thirty years ago. Not even
in the most yellow newspaper would
one now see what L have seen in the
great dailies of that day I once saw
in a Chicago newspaper in the wretch
ed ALTERATION of the period q Harlns
headline preceding an account of an
execution which read: 'Jerked to
-'' and then followed the human
name of our blessed Lord. Other things
| can remember in those years when
seemed to think that the
correct way to write of a divorce, |
-rirr.e. or even a sorrow was to employ
a humorous style, and religious sub
jects were, it seemed to me, usually
sneered at. The personal abuse which
editors heaped upon each other was
often such that no paper would put
such matter into print now.
Again, in the personnel of news
PAPER men there was a time when many |
engaged III the work We're supposed to-
De hard drinkers. Today such would
ind it difficult to get on paper. have
or years counted as my valued friends
newspaper men, whose friendship have
yalued and whose character l admired