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Show WOULDN'T AGREE TO BE DECENT At; last tho Smoot organ lets tho cat out of tho bag in regard to its mendacity men-dacity in reporting the execution of ,1. .1. Morris. Tt scorns anxious to la' tho blame of its falsehoods upon Sheriff Sher-iff Sharp, a compliment which no doubt that officer will duly appreciate. It boasts that, it would not enter into any agroomcnt whereby its report of tho Morris execution could bo "censored." "cen-sored." Tho facts are these: The law renuiron that executions bo private. Tho prison management, iu order to afford af-ford every facility for tho newspapers to set tho facts in the case, offered facilities for a fair and candid roport for all, just as the Associated Press news is supplied, stipulating only that the plain facts alone should be reported, re-ported, that there should bo no at-tomtit at-tomtit at exaggeration or sensationalism: sensational-ism: that i3, tho papers Bhould. decently decent-ly aud accordiug to law, report; the hanging .just as it was, without undertaking under-taking to make yellow sensationalism out of it. In other words, the papers wero to bo decent in their treatment of the case. The Tribuno found no difficulty in agreeing to this, because that waa precisely the sort of Toport that it desired (o make. Wo published the facts only, plain and unvarnished. The other papers in tho city alBo assented as-sented to tho proposition that they would coufinc their account to the facts in the rase. Tile Smoot paper refused: that; is, it rofused to agroe to bo decent iu its report of the Morris execution, and refused to be bound by the truth and tho facts; refused to accept ac-cept such a roport of the hanging as it receives every day in its general news service, proleudinir that it would bo "censored," that is, it refused to acree to bo truthful In its report. It might iust as well say that tho general news roport which it gets from the Associated As-sociated Press is a censored report as lo say that our report of tho Morris execuption was censored. And now it undertakes to put its faith altogether in tho Sheriff, claiming that he was in chargo of tho execution, execu-tion, and consequently selected those who should bo in attendance, and it expressed itself as pleased because it was able to get its. account from those who were present at the execution on the invitation of Sheriff Sharp. This is a cloar intimation that the statements so clearly denied by Warden Pratt wcro furnished by the Sheriff or some ono in his coufidonco, and n insists that the finding of what it calls "tho knives" had an important bearing upon the execution, tho fact boing, as. Warden Pratt explains, that thoy wore simply strips of metal which had been used bv Sirmay in undertaking to perfect per-fect an invention upon which ho was at work, and were not knives at all, nor wero thoy of such character as would enable them to be used as weapons wea-pons at all dangerous. Tho summing of the matter is that tho prison officials desired to have a plain, unvarnished account of the execution exe-cution iust as it was. The Salt Lake papers all agreed to this, except the Smoot paper, which determined to leave its wav open to exaggeration, falsehood, and misrepresentation. That is, it was false in its account, aud intended in-tended to be false. In the matter of tho metal Bpoken of, it placed the finding find-ing of it in connection with the exe cution, wncrcas tu meuw sins au been withdrawn two weeks before, simply as a measure of precaution, and vet the Smoot organ uncTertook to make a sensation out of the "finding" of these "knives" in connection with the execution of the death sentence upon Morris! The public can see, therefore, why it was that the Smoot paper refused to pledge itself to be decent and confine con-fine itself to the truth in the matter of the Morris execution; it wanted to be frco to indulge iu falsehood and sensationalism. sen-sationalism. The case is perfectly nlain. on the admission of the Smoot organ itself. It refused to agree to be decent, and in its account of tho execution exe-cution it carried out its indecent purpose pur-pose by printing falsehoods aud sensational sen-sational stuff that was both unlruc and that had nothing whatever to do with the execution, nor with the Morris case in any of its phases. |
