Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/238



The question of official reporting does not end with the right of reporting the proceedings of representative legislative bodies, although it has involved more bitter controversy than have other

branches of the subject. The right of the press to report court trials was early disputed and obstacles were put in the way of reporters scarcely less troublesome than awaited them at the doors of Parliament. Even in the early nineteenth century, news papers were forbidden under heavy penalties to publish reports of unfinished cases in the law courts, - a rule, however , that was set

at naught in the case of at least one enterprising newspaper.59 The hostility of the courts towards press reporters was no less in evidence during the same period in America. In 1830, J. G.

Bennett went from New York to Salem, Massachusetts , to report a murder trial, where he found the courtmuch opposed to repor ters. The judges waived jurisdiction for one day over the press from other states, and then forbade all from taking notes for

immediate publication, - Bennett wrote, July 10, 1830, that the court gave notice that " if any person was detected in taking notes

of the evidence in the Court House, for the purpose of sending them out of the State for publication, previous to the conclusion

of the trial, he would be proceeded against by the court as for a contempt.” 60 But the reporter may often render a very real service to the cause of justice. It has been noted more than once that a trained

reporter may sometimes brush away the obscurities of the law and see the point at issuemore clearly than the court, bound to give decisions in accordance with the law. The reporter may see more clearly the point of justice than the judge who sees only the law , “ and often bad law .” This at least has been the opinion of a former court reporter.61

The historian is indeed not dependent on the press for ver batim reports of trials and decisions of courts,but he may be mis

led by the “ stories ” given by it. If a newspaper is for any reason specially interested in securing the conviction of a person wrong fully charged with violation of the law, its reporters may skil 59 H. Vizetelly, Glances Back through Seventy Years, I, 154. 60 Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett, pp. 119 -120.

61 F. F. Heard, Curiosities of the Law Reporters, 1871.