APPENDIX
heathen, are concerned alike that a deliberate policy of false
report to secure ill-gotten gain should not succeed. What is the
remedy? Sooner or later one must be provided. Recently in
one of the states, an offended citizen shot and killed an editor,
was tried for murder and acquitted. Lawlessness is the inevitable
result of a failure of the law to correct existing evils. How can
the right of a newspaper to publish the facts concerning the
government and its officials and to comment on them even
mistakenly be preserved, and the continuance of intentional fabrication
in the guise of news be prevented? The constitution in the
same section provides for freedom of speech, as well as freedom
of the press. Under the English common law, when a woman
habitually made outcries of scandals upon the public highways
to the annoyance of the neighborhood, she was held to be a common
scold and a public nuisance. Anybody may abate a public
mnuisance, and she was punished by being ducked in a neighboring
pond. Notwithstanding our constitutional provision
concerning freedom of speech, in the case of Commonwealth vs.
Mohn, 2 P. F. Smith, page 243, it was held that the law of common
scolds is retained in Pennsylvania, though the punishment
is by fine and imprisonment. To punish an old woman, whose
scandalous outcries are confined to the precincts of one alley, and
to overlook the ululations which are daily dinned into the ears
of an unwilling but helpless public by such journals as have been
described, is unjust to both her and them. I suggest the
application of this legal principle to the habitual publication of
scandalous untruths. Let the persons harmed or annoyed present a
petition to the attorney general setting forth the facts and if,
in his judgment, they show a case of habitual falsehood, defamation
and scandal so as to constitute a public nuisance, let him
file a bill in the court of common pleas having jurisdiction, asking
for an abatement of the nuisance, and let the court have authority,
upon sufficient proof, to make such abatement by suppression
of the journal so offending, in whole or in part, as may be
necessary. Since this adaptation of existing law is only to be
applied to the elimination of habitual falsehood in public expression,
it will probably meet with no objection from reputable
newspapers. Since both the attorney general and the courts would
have to concur, the rights of legitimate journalism are sufficiently
protected and it is only in an extreme case that the law could be
invoked. For that case, it provides a remedy. I submit herewith
(marked A) a draft of an act upon these lines.
