Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/477



JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 435

loose was the fire hazard in these stores and that no newspaper had the courage to describe the conditions. Yet when conditions attending employment in the large department stores hi New York were publicly taken up at a hearing of the Federal Com- mission on Industrial Relations, the New York papers printed without suppression the facts brought out at the inquiry, not only about the two stores to which reference has been made, but also about all the larger stores of the city. t For some reason, doubtless best known to city editors, the following assertion by former Chief Guerin of the Bureau of Fire Prevention was omitted: "I must say that the department store managers are fair and ready to do anything within reason to correct existing imperfect conditions." City editors have seen no reason why they should attack fire hazards in department stores when worse conditions existed in many manufacturing plants. They were unable, in spite of several attempts, to arouse the people to the necessity of better working conditions and regretted that it would take a great holocaust like the fire in the Triangle Shirt- waist Factory to arouse the public conscience.

Not long ago the owner of a large department store failed La business. There was a pretty well founded rumor that condi- tions had not been just right at his store for some time. Because the New York papers did not give any publicity to the matter till the failure was a legal fact, they were accused of suppressing the news because of the advertising revenue derived from the store. Such critics overlooked the fact that such publication might have made the newspapers financially responsible for the failure. During the Panic of 1907 a New York newspaper printed a story that a certain business establishment was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was, and later failed. The owners brought suit against the newspapers and collected heavy damages on the ground that the failure had been caused by the publi- cation of the item. Courts, as Whitelaw Reid, of The New York Tribune, pointed out in his lecture on " Journalism" at Yale University, have been rather harsh on newspapers for publish- ing items of this character and newspapers cannot be blamed for the use of ordinary common sense in such matters.

One incident, unfortunate and distressing, has been tossed