Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1919-04-01
inv q. str,ndvold.

Suspension of judgment y neces-
sary almost every day when some
newspaper report presents aspicture
OF conditions said to obtain N 2 for-
eign country. It is necessary
the other newspaper report may gave
a directly opposite view OF tne. very
same situation, and because 1ne READ
err IL unable to place a correct valua-
ton on the particular item Of news.
This does not mean hat the CORE
spondents in question intend to tell
untrue stories, but merely that they
receive their information from certain
sources which they have reason to be-
lieve are reliable and dependable. II
is very seldom that a newspaper cor
respondent lies nowadays-it he dld,
1t would not take his editor or his
readers very long to find it out, and
dismissal would be the only punish
|ment fitting the offense-except In n
case of The disreputable part Of the
press.
In spite Of this, stories in newspa-
pers continue to be contradictory, and
the reader is cup in the air.
although he is generally inclined to
believe one side more implicitly than
the other. I
Viewpoint is Determinadve.
It is the viewpoint of the original
informant which most frequently I'm.
presses itself upon the correspondent
not often his own, for he 10 expect
ed merely to report facts and aVe
since it is inevitable that viewpoints
conflict, it cannot be assumed that
reports of them can be literally
harmonious.
! To take a couple of cases in point:
A London dispatch Of yesterday
contains the news that George Lam
bury, editor of a new labor newspa-
per, the Daily Herald, maintains thar
order reigns in Russia; that the
regime of terror is not one-tenth as
serious as it has been represented;
"outrageously slandered" and hat the
present Russian administration is
clean and uncorrupt."
Accepting this information at its
surface value, the reader forms a pic
ture of Russian conditions which is
distinctly different from that which
other reports have outlined in his
mind. The thing to do then is tc
suspend judgment, to avoid being
positive in making assertions, and tc
conduct a little investigation.
In order to arrive at a conclusion
which seems fairly reasonable the
reader must consider the sources o,
news and also recall that there is
certain motive back of every report
He must also keep in mind whether
or not previous reports have beer
confirmed or effectively denied, anc
never lose sight of the general trend
of events in Russia during the last
twelve months or so.
To judge sanely about the truth Of
a news report one must persist IL
| <h;olx;rr 0f - oe ,fnprNotinr MI ieh Ss
not isolated. 1t is connected with 6
multitude Of other news items; with
thousand little details; with Other
claims and counterclaims, and it car
ries a message only in proportion tt
the background that brings it out.
Do tho Germans Love the British?
Long before the fateful days Of
August, 1914, it was a generally &C
cepted commonplace that the Ger
mans despised the British, and thai
whatever amity existed between then
During tho war We were told a thou
sand times how indescribably Ger
many hated England, and Lissauer'!
Hymn Of Hatred" was only one O
many poems in which the nationa
hatred found concrete and definite ex
preston. Time and again German
were said to greet each other witt
the pious ~salutation, "Gott straf!
Englandu," and testimony of this kin,
has nevef been controversial. it
In this case, there could ben
doubt as to the tone of the expression
the hatred found. The doubt tina
might arise would concern the posi-
BILE prevalence of the emotion come
into expletives. AS to this, Their
lave been, during the last four or -fv
years, very good reasons for believ