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Show The Service of Your Newspaper What would happen in any city if it should be suddenly deprived of its daily newspapers? Perhaps the best answer to that question can be found in what actually did happen at Bulte, Montana, recently when the town's two daily newspapers suspended publication for several days during a watfe scale controversy with printers. print-ers. With the public cut off from its authentic sources of news, all soils of wild rumors began to fill the air, gaining speed and believers as they traveled. Said one rumor: A terrible murder had been committed commit-ted near the city. Said another rumor: Iloiius rioters had blown up the White House. Said ;i third: President Hoover had been assassinated. The city was in a turmoil. Wild stories of every sort were circulated and human nature being what it is found eager believers. There is probably 110 clearer example of the important part that newspapers play in our daily lives. Butte's experience ex-perience proves that suspension of newspapers, even for a limited time, can become a calamity of dangerous proportions. propor-tions. Rumor and falsehoods link in the darkness, but truth loves the light and thrives upon it. All of which helps explain why newspaper editors, recognizing .their public duty, are insistent in their demand lor needom of the press anil opposed to censorship of any innd, since censorship is merely a form of suppression of the news. Not a few editors, faced with contempt citations by judges who arrogate unto themselves the power to say what the public shall read and what it shall not have gone to ia.il in defense of this principle. "The truth hurts," says the old adage but publication of the truth never hurt any community. |
