Note 13.
case, the effect is to create a wrong impression , even though the
facts have been stated accurately . Somewhat akin in spirit is the temptation of the reporter , after describing a local incident, to add, “ This reflects the feeling
of the entire community for state or country , as the case may be].”
Related to these errors of general impressions are those that grow out of the meager facts furnished the reporter and the apparent necessity , as he sees it, of supplementing these with accounts padded by his own imagination . The result is that a column is often spun from a very slender basis of fact and it may
in the future be difficult to disentangle the basis of fact from the attenuated description . Often the reporter is not present at the
events he describes and hence draws on his imagination for the
details needed and thereby again falls into error. A reporter once described a college commencement dinner at which a silver bowl
was presented to the college from the Mikado of Japan and stated , “ It was presented to the college by the Baroness Uriu herself in a clever speech, in the deliberate English which marks her delivery ." But the Baroness made no public address on the occasion , the presentation of the gift being announced by the president of the college.
The reporter sometimes yields to the temptation to " feature" an insignificant episode, thus distorting all sense of proportion
and in effect falsifying the news. At a great public meeting called in New York in 1915 to consider a massacre of the Arme
nians, a slight disturbance was caused by the necessity of putting a man out of the theater. This was " featured ” by four New
York dailies that therefore gave “ only a fraction of their valuable space to a true report of themeeting and of themassacre it was called to consider .” 10 A variant of this is the proneness to exaggerate the trifling
news connected with important persons, — " only the rich man is interesting ” once said a prominent newspaper man in an address on journalism to college students. On the other hand , events important in themselves but connected with an individual 10 " The Falsification of the News,” The Independent, December 13, 1915 , 84 :
