OCR Text |
Show The Accuracy of Newspapers Newspapers are compelled to accept descriptions and statements of eye-witnesses of many occurrences, not many of whom will ever agree as to what actually did happen. When we consider that truth is more elusive than fortune and that the greatest great-est labors and expenditures of newspapers news-papers are always in pursuit of the former it is remarkable not that errors are made, but that there are not more of them. Of course, those who, like a recent foolish speaker in St. Louis, remarks the Republic of that city, charged that newspapers do not try to get facts, do not know what they are talking about. Millions of dollars are spent by newspapers news-papers in running down falsehoods, and ihe matter that is excluded every day' from a well-conducts I newspaper is greater in amount and often in cost than that which is printed. Considering what a newspaper of decent character undertakes to do, it comes about as near to acco.nrj ishing its purpose as any business enterprise with which we are acquainted. It al-w al-w -ys acts hurriedly, it scans continents and seas, it is in touch with populations amounting to hundreds of millions in number, it deals with and treats of every human passion, impulse and propensity pro-pensity and it is M.vays subject to the 'gnorance and prejudices of other people peo-ple as well as its own. Yet it is delivered deliver-ed every morning on time many miles from the office of publication with no more serious errors in its columns than are made every day in a thousand other lines of business that are not subject to perpetual misrepresentation and abus?. The Pacific Printer. |