Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/169

160 mittee were named Clarke, S. A. Moreland of the Oregonian, and Ireland. This committee at a later meeting reported having handed to the legislature a memorial and a bill covering the desired changes in the law. The bill was placed in the hands of Senator Lord of Marion county.

The law as passed unanimously by the legislature defined criminal libel and provided penalty as follows:

"Penalty.—If any person shall wilfully, by any means other than words orally spoken, publish or cause to be published of or concerning another, any false and scandalous matter, with intent to injure or defame such other person, upon conviction thereof he shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not less than three months nor more than one year, or by fine not less than $100 nor more than $500. Any allusion to any person or family, with intention to injure, defame or maliciously annoy such person or family, shall be deemed to come within the provisions of this section; and it is hereby made the duty of the prosecuting attorney of each judicial district to see that the provisions of this section are enforced, whether the party injured desires to prosecute such offense or not."

The momentum given this law by the Mercer-McDonald tragedy is indicated in the specific reference to "allusion to any person or family." In the Sunday Mercury case in 1893, the court ruled that malice is presumed unless it appears that the matter charged as libelous is true, and published with good motives and for justifiable ends.

In that same year of 1893 after one of the most thoroughgoing bits of defamation ever published in Oregon had been given to the Oregon public, the Oregon supreme court, Judge Robert Sharp Bean framing the decision, ruled that

"...it is not only the privilege but the duty of the public press to discuss before the electors the fitness and qualifications of candidates for public office conferred by the election of the people; and when a man becomes such a candidate, he must be considered as putting his character in issue so far as respects his fitness and qualifications for the office, and that every person who engages in the discussion, whether in private conversation, in public speech, or in the newspapers, may, while keeping within proper limits and acting in good faith, be regarded and protected as one engaged in the discharge of a duty. But ...an elector . . . has no right to calumniate a candidate for office with impunity."