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Show THE PI? ESS MUST GIVE WHOLE TRUTH So long as newspapers "give truth to the public," declares James M. Cox, "we can depend on the common-sense common-sense and patriotism of the mass of the people' to keep us free." The former governor of Ohio and one-time Democratic Demo-cratic nominee for president, was speaking at the dedication dedica-tion of a new plant in Atlanta, Ga. He expressed the wish that the new press never "carry into the printed sheet an untruth deliberately." He quoted the remark of Thomas Jefferson that, if he had to choose between the press and government, he would say that the press should come first. We are in thorough accord with the ideal expounded by Mr. Cox but, in our opinion, it is necessary to go further fur-ther than merely to refrain from printing something untrue. un-true. The truth, upon which people can depend, must not only include facts, but they must be presented in such a balanced manner as to give the reader a correct impression impres-sion of the whole picture involved. It is quite possible for propagandists to print nothing but the truth but yet distort dis-tort the correct conclusion by suppressing other- facts which are also true. We greatly admire newspapers of the United States and the journalists who present them to the public. Nevertheless, Nev-ertheless, there has developed quite a tendency, both on the. part of newspapers and on the part of radio stations, and those connected with them, to over-emphasize incidental inci-dental facts and occasional occurrences so that the net result is an untrue picture of the situation as an entity. |