Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/112

100 On the front page a criminal describes how another criminal told him about a murder he had done. In the same paper the story of a man whose ex-wife beat him on the head with a claw hammer and slashed him with a buteher knife.

tn the same paper, story of a lawyer who killed himself,

In another, a story of that man who shot lis wife while having a nightmare.

Another. a story of a gang who collected an arsenal of guns and knives, These are very many stories of violence and crime in the Herald Tribune today.

Tam not saying it is wrong, but when you aitack comies, when you talk about banning them as they do in some eities, you are only a step away from banning crimes in the newspapers.

Here is something interesting which I think most of us don't know. Crime news is being made in some places. The United Nations UNESCO report, which I believe is the only place that it is printed, shows that erime news is not permitted to appear in newspapers in Russia or Communist China, or other Conmmunist-held territortes.

We print our crime news. We don't think that the erime mews or any news should be banned because it. ts bad fer children,

Onee you start to censor you must censor everything. You must censor comic books, radio, television, and newspapers.

Then you must censor what people may say. Then you will have turned this country into Spain or Russia.

Mr. . Mr. Gaines, let me ask you one thing with reference to Dr. Wertham's testimony.

Yon used the pages of your comic book to send across a message, in this case it was against racial prejudice; is that it?

Mr. . That is right.

Mr. . You think, therefore, yon can vet across « message to the kids through the medium of your magazine that would lessen racial prejudice: is that it?

Mr. . By specific effort and spelling it out very carefully so that the point won't be missed by any of the readers, and I regret to admit that it still 1s missed by some readers, as well as Dr. Wer- tham—we have, I think, achieved some degree of suceess In combating anti-Semitism, anti-Negro feeling, and so forth.

Mr. . Yet why do you say you cannot. at the same time and in the same manner nse the pages of your maguzme to get a message which would affect children adversely, that is, to have an effect upon their doing these deeds of violence or sadism, whatever is depicted ?

Mr. . Because no message is being given to them. In other words, when we write a story with a message, it is deliberately written in such a way that the message, as I say, is spelled ont carefully in the captions. The preaching, if you want to call it, js spelled ont carefully in the captions, plus the fact that our readers ly this time know that in each issue of shock snspense stories, the second of the stories will be this type of story.

Mr. . A message can be gotten across without spelling out im that detail. For example, take this case that was presented this morn- ing of the child who is in a foster home who became « werewolf, and foster parents

Mr. . That was one of our stories.