The court news and the movements of royalty and the upper
ten thousand have great charms for a large section of the community.
Accidents and offences and sensation headings, such as 'horrible
murder,' 'melancholy suicide,' 'terrific explosion,' 'fatal shipwreck,'
'awful railway collision,' and the like, have powerful attractions for
that class which is--alas for human nature!--only too numerous, and
which likes to sup full of horrors--in print. In the same category with
these may be placed police news, and the proceedings in the divorce
court, the full reports of which are a blemish from which not even the
greatest of English journals are free. There have been found able and
honest men to defend these reports on the ground of the 'interests of
morality,' than which there is not a more abused phrase in print. But to
the man of ordinary common sense it would appear that more harm than
good results from them. Where can the viciously disposed man or the
novice in crime apply with better prospects of instruction in the
pursuit of his evil designs than to the columns of the newspaper? It is
perhaps not too much to say that for every two persons whom these
reports deter from crime, there are three who have been either initiated
or hardened in wickedness and sin by their means. This is a matter which
calls loudly for reform; and let it, with all sorrow and humility, be
confessed, one in which the better American journals shine vastly
superior to their English brethren.
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