Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1917-02-22
Where Publicity Is
Wholly Undesirable

The people of the United States,
like the people Of all democratic
countries, are properly jealous of their
right to a free press. That goes
without saying. Invasion of this right
is not to be condoned on any ground.
A free press and personal liberty are
sacred prerogatiVes. But personal
liberty has it's limitations. There is
no confusion, in intelligent thought in
the United States today, as to the dis
tinction between liberty and license.
In the. widest possible Interpretation
of personal freedom in a democracy,
no citizen has a right to do that which
infringes on the rights of another, or
that which is contrary to public pol
icy. While the liberty of the individ-
ual is asserted, admitted, and safe
guarded with a liberality that tyranny
is unable to understand, much less
concede, there is a line beyond which
it is agreed the individual must not
go. That fact has come to be recog-
nized and respected ~instinctively by
the great mass of the people.
But what the individual citizen does
not claim for himself as a privilege or
a right, he is too often disposed to
grant to the newspaper. He realizes
fully that there are times when public
policy demands discretion, judgment,
reserve, even silence on the part of
the citizen; yet at the same time his
attitude toward the press is often such
as to encourage what amounts to
breaches of public confidence and be-
trayal of secrets, which involve pub
lie as well as private in tereStS of
supreme Importance.
Much of the freedom enjoyed by
the press, in democratic countries, is
conditional upon the observance by
the press of certain very welldef1ned
obligations. Because, generally
speaking, there is little hat demands
concealment in the United States,
some newspapers forget or ignore the
fact that conditions may be so chang
ed, within a few hours, as to make the
Withholding of what, in ordinary cir
cumstances, might be classed as
news. a far greater service to the
people than the publishing of it. There
have been many instances, recently,
when ordinary discretion and ordin-
airy editorial judgment should have
brought about the suppression, rather
than the conspicuous display, of a
vast amount of so-called news mat
ter Utterly without excuse has been
the exploitation of news concerning
the movements of shipping, measures
taken for the protection of wharyes
and bridges, orders to the navy, mill
tary assignments, munition stores,
and SO on.
Let it be sincerely hoped that the
agents of nc w%atchful, possible en-
envy nation have been engaged in
gathering up the facts with reference
to the defensive position Of the Unit
ed States which have been SO gener-
ously and foolishly exposed and dis
tributed by the free press of that
country during the last ten days, and
that no harm may come of SO much
prodigality of governmental and ed
itorial condolences. Possibly no in
jury to the nation or to it's people will
follow, at this time, a revelation of
facts that should have been kept be-
hing locked doors. But, if no lament.
able consequences ensue, credit for
such an escape from folly will not be
due the press that INDUCED in it, the
people who encouraged it, or the au.
thorities who permitted it.-Christian
Science Monitor.