The Opelousas courier., 1907-11-30
THE IRRESPONSIBLE REPORTER
WHO QUOTES PUBLIC MEN


In replying the other day to some airy
persifage to the effect that he had finally
decided Ito quit politics." and perhaps
"to start another party" Henry Waiter
son hit squarely on the head a nail which
most public men doubtless would like to
see driven home finally and for all time.
"The boys he, referring to various
contemporaries who had published the
announcement concerning him, Should
beware of the ubiquitous reporter and
the everlasting interview. Nothing goes
but what appears in these columns.
TO be caught by the nape of the neck
and the seat of the breeches and tossed
heels over head into print by a space
writer who undertakes to tell the public
what he thinks you think-and that
without notes, or ven a note-book-has
become an added peril of modern travel"
Unfortunately, says the Washington
Herald, as the dean of the newspaper
profession of America thus pungently in
Inmates, there are in that profession some
nen-only a small number, comparative
ly, but still altogether too many-to
whom statements made or not made by a
celebrity have absolutely no part in the
interviews" with him which they place
before the public through the paper they
represent.
Bogus Interviews II
Usually the papers in question not only
condone this species of taking, but en-
courage it, and are even more to blame
than the irresponsible reporter. So long
as the interviews are spicy or startling, |
the editors of such journals care no more
about whether they are true or not than
do their employees.
The result is that a public man or
other distinguished person is sometimes
injured through misquotation or absolute
misrepresentation - injured even more
seriously, we think, than the honest and
conscientious reporter whose truthful
and accurate news story or interview is
wantonly denied by the public man it
concerns, and whose interests do not hap
pen to be served by it.
Such denials are as much more fire.
quent than misleading interviews or
news items in reputable papers, as the
right kind of newspaper writer's are more
numerous than the other kind. But the
individuality of the reporters thus con-
tradicted is usually so merged with that
of the papers they serve, and they are so
hardened to being thrown down" by po-1
litical trimmers and others not above
yielding to untruthfulness in the interest
of self, that neither their regulations nor
their feelings suffer.
Misquotatfons Stick
But many a mar in the public eye, on
the other hand, has been plagued all his
life by a statement wrongfully attributed
to him by careless or taking writer.
In a large number of cases, perhaps,
the public is able to judge as to the truth
fulness or untruthfulness of interviews
and news articles, just as the careful and
honest editor discriminates between the
grain. and the tares that come to him.
Nevertheless, every reporter and inter
viewer is under a sacred obligation to the
public to be accurate and impartial, and
to punishb direct quotations only when he
has the exact language of the speaker.
When the careless, the sensational, and
the taking ones are made to realize the
existence of this obligation, and to act ac-
cordingly, neither Mr.. Watterson nor any
other man who INDUCES in modern
travel need fear being pitched into print
in the incontinent manner so feelingly de-
scribed by the gentleman from Louis
ville.-Publishers' Auxiliary.