The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-29
RALPH PULITZER
 TALKSAT SCHOOL
Son of Founder Scathingly Attacks Papers Opposed
 To Facts
From the New York Times.

from the New 1Ofk limos.
 Ralph Pulitzer, son of the late Joseph Pulitzer, who endowed the Pulitzer School of Journalism, received an en- thusiastie greeting fron the Columbia students Monday afternoon when he ad- dressed them in the Earl hall audi torium lie spoke of the avidity with which his father seized on all sources of knowledge, and said the older Pulit- ger hated an inaccurate statement as another man would loathe lie.
 MT. Pulitzer was seathing in his char acterization of the newspaper which ad- mits that facts embarrass rather than please it. Such a paper he put in the class of monstrosities, while the paper that prints >>eurate statements, how ever innocently. he described as one performing an essentially abnormal function" He said in part:
 Accuracy in newspaper writing was with Joseph Pulitzer religion. He had a ravenous craving for informa- ton. His intellect was positively leech- like in the way it fastened on any other intellect with which it came in contact, and sucked from 1t every specific fact it contained that he did not already know. He was intolerant of generali- zations and impatient of conclusions. He would draw his own. He hated an inaccurate statement as another man would loathe a lie. He was memorable in running 1t down and tearing it to pieces. Scrupulous as was his love of accuracy in the news columns, 1t was nothing compared 10 the almost pain ful eonscientiousness of his precision on the editorial page. Among his nti- mates, in his spoken words, glowing white-hot from the furnace of his con- victions, he was always vehement often violent and not seldom intensely in- temperate in his statement of case. These same qualities therefore ap- peared in the first rough draft of an editorial. Paragraph by paragraph, L, word by word, he would then som etimes for days work his way through that editorial, weighing each word to see whether it wsA ever so little of. an overstatement or understatement, or a misstatement of exact fact.
 ''The newspaper Mir. Pulitzer went on. lis manufactured out of the sub- tlest, most volatile, most elusive raw material in the world-the truth"
 He showed the difficulties with which every newspaper had to contend in getting, writing, printing and distribu- ting its facts, resulting often in unfor- tunate but innocent inaccuracies. in order that he might point out and criti- else more severely those other inaccu- racies in some papers which are not innocent, but are vicious, deliberate fakes.
 He Illustrated his argument with ia akes, historic and modern, from the moon hoax to lurid Titanic" extra, and showed wherein even the "humor- ous" and harmless" fake injured and ruined reporters and sapped the char acter and reputation of a newspaper.
 "There are papers, he said. which cynically avow their motto to be Facts merely embarrass us,' but you can pret- ty well count all of them in this coun- try on the fingers of your two hands. They are evanescent. Any institution that flourishes on an appeal to morbid ness by the aid of mendacity can have but a precarious hold on prosperity or evtn on life itself.
 q don't think any one who knows his newspaper history will question the fact that striving for accuracy is stead fly growing keener and more wide spread. For every $i that responsible paper spends in originally getting a piece of news, it spends S6 on verify ing 1t. And think I can safely assert that in any important story where the facts are all available, from a national convention to murder trial or foot ball game. the newspapers are extra ordinarily accurate.
 - If this school proves the success that I sincerely believe it will every year 1t will inject into journalism the tonic of class of young men who re- gard newspaper work not as trade, but as a trust. who have been trained not only in the technique, but in the highest traditions Of their life's work. You will realize that truth telling is the sole reason for the existence of d press at all; that every time a journal prints a mistake it is performing an essentially abnormal function, that every time 1t prints a deliberate fake 1t becomes a degererate and perverted monstrosity-'