Evening star., 1937-05-21
Inviting Press Censorship
What Burlesque Threatened to Theater, Lurid
Stories May Do to Newspapers.

OF their lives to escape rigid censor
ship and to maintain any freedom at
all.
This column has already expressed
its indignation at the conduct OF the
press in the Gedeon case, where man,
since dismissed as innocent, was pill
loried for days as probable murderer
Of his own child. An even more afro
cious example OF this sort Of charac-
ter assassination occurred this week
This time the victim was a 3-year-old
boy.
selves, they will one day have the night
An infant who had been left ap-
parently perfectly we'll was found
dead in New York apartment. The
only person present was = 3-year-old
child. The child-aged three-was
asked II he had hit his sister, and
replied YES" So he was presented
to the gasping public as tiny mon
ster, the victim OF Unsuitable Jealousy,
who had battered his baby sister to
death.
Results in Innocence.
Now it develops that the baby sister
died in commissions Of a deranged
thymus gland-a sudden death for In
fants which Is infrequent, but by no
means extraordinary. Meanwhile lit
tie brother has been made into
creature to be Stunned by anxious
parents.
The newspapers, and especially the
more sensational ones this week, have
been such as to cause all parents to
dread the time when their own chill
dren can read! The ballyhooing of
the terrible case Of Mrs. Tiernan is
reading to make the blood run cold.
Do all the photographs, do all the
highly dramatized details have any
thing really to do with the dissemi-
nation Of news Of public interest or
Importance?
Nothing in the burlesque shows
could possibly have been more re-
voting than a life story which a New
York paper ran in four or nve in
stallments some days ago. An ex-
follies beauty and movie star hos
pitalized for drug addiction and i'm
prisoned for debts was persuaded to
tell the story Of her life.
Story Between the Lines.
The story included her relations with
one husband and two lovers, and one
Of these stories is material for materia
medica or the works Of Kraft-Ebbing,
and that the paper did not dare TO
print all the details did not prevent it
from writing all around them and
conveying luridly a story to induce
nausea. After all, mothers did not send
their children to burlesque shows, but
how can any one protect his child
against this sort of filth distributed in
| papers availab bic at any corner or left
on seats in buses and subWays?
This column believes in free press
This column is opposed to govern
ment censorship and wants to see it
prevented But it will be proposed as
sure as death and taxes if this sort
of thing continues to go ON.
In England the press was saved
from government censorship by the
action of the National Union Of Jour.
nalists, the British equivalent Of thu
Newspaper Guild, the trade union o.
reporters and editors. Precisely ir
order to prevent censorship, and BE-
cause. also, they we're sick and tret
Of being given assignments which nj
one with pretensions to Journalistic
ethics or the instincts Of decent hui
man being could stomach, they de-
manded self-control and got it. Onl.
the newspaper men themselves car
stop this sort Of thing bV nom govern