JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 443
A paper full of the items suppressed for the good of the com- munity would cause a greater sensation than any which has yet been printed. Even the most sensational newspapers suppress many stories of crime in the interest of the public welfare. News thus suppressed is that to which the community is not legiti- mately entitled and shows not the weakness, but the strength, of the American press. Newspapers occasionally make mistakes, they are but human institutions, but on the whole, they serve the community well.
PRESENT-DAY ETHICS
In the opinion of the writer the ethics of journalism of to-day are higher than those of any other profession. What the press does is known and read by all men. It does not print one edition for one class of subscribers and another for another. The only exception to this rule was an editor in a Western city who pub- lished a somewhat sensational sheet. After the regular edition was run off, he used to "lift" the stories of crime and fill the spaces with reports of acts of kindness, sermons, etc. The sec- ond edition consisted of but one copy the copy which the editor took home to his aged mother. With this single exception, which really amounts to nothing except as an interesting inci- dent, every reader knows exactly where the paper stands. It may be on the wrong side, but it is publicly labeled so that no one is deceived. What other profession can say as much?
How The Bulletin, of San Francisco, California, practically unsupported, aroused that city to a realization of the corruption of the Ruef-Schmitz machine is a story too widely known to be retold here. But as The Bulletin had sent Abraham Ruef to jail and then asked for his parole, its readers could not understand the attitude of the paper toward the convicted grafter: to them it seemed paradoxical. In answer to a correspondent who was indignant that The Bulletin should ask that Ruef be set free, Fremont Older, the editor of The Bulletin, explained his change in view as follows:
I have asked mercy for Ruef because I feel that I did most to bring about his downfall. The Bulletin fought Ruef long before the rest of San Francisco woke up. I attacked him with all the invective I could
