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 Note 13.

case, the effect is to create a wrong impression, even though the

facts have been stated accurately. Somewhat akin in spirit is the temptation of the reporter , after describing a local incident, to add, “ This reflects the feeling

of the entire community for state or country, as the case may be].”

Related to these errors of general impressions are those that grow out of the meager facts furnished the reporter and the apparent necessity, as he sees it, of supplementing these with accounts padded by his own imagination. The result is that a column is often spun from a very slender basis of fact and it may

in the future be difficult to disentangle the basis of fact from the attenuated description. Often the reporter is not present at the

events he describes and hence draws on his imagination for the

details needed and thereby again falls into error. A reporter once described a college commencement dinner at which a silver bowl

was presented to the college from the Mikado of Japan and stated, “ It was presented to the college by the Baroness Uriu herself in a clever speech, in the deliberate English which marks her delivery ." But the Baroness made no public address on the occasion, the presentation of the gift being announced by the president of the college.

The reporter sometimes yields to the temptation to " feature" an insignificant episode, thus distorting all sense of proportion

and in effect falsifying the news. At a great public meeting called in New York in 1915 to consider a massacre of the Arme

nians, a slight disturbance was caused by the necessity of putting a man out of the theater. This was " featured ” by four New

York dailies that therefore gave “ only a fraction of their valuable space to a true report of themeeting and of themassacre it was called to consider .” 10 A variant of this is the proneness to exaggerate the trifling

news connected with important persons, — " only the rich man is interesting ” once said a prominent newspaper man in an address on journalism to college students. On the other hand, events important in themselves but connected with an individual 10 " The Falsification of the News,” The Independent, December 13, 1915, 84 :