NEWSPAPER RESPONSIBILITY; FUNCTION OF PRESS IN CAMPAIGN LIKE LAST ONE
By ROBERT W. RUHL, Editor Medford Mail-Tribune.
[In this paper, read before the Oregon Newspaper Conference, Mr. Ruhl, declaring in an extempore introduction that editors were often either "pussyfoot" or "wildcat" in policy, assailed pussyfooting as he saw it in the last campaign.]
"THE newspaper editor has a double responsibility, first to give the people the news, second to give them the significance of that news. The first responsibility has to do with the news columns; the second responsibility with the editorial columns. In the news columns should be the interpretation of those facts. The newspaper that has news but no opinions, is of little more use in the field of journalism than the newspaper that has opinions but no news. News without opinions is a body without a soul; opinion without news is a soul without a body. Both are essential if the newspaper is to retain its place in human affairs, and is to properly dis charge its primary obligation, which is the enlightenment and leadership of public opinion."
This definition of editorial responsibility is from a speech delivered by Mr. Keeley, 1903, and it serves as the text of the present discourse.
Now if Mr. Keeley knew what he was talking about, and I believe he did, and if these dicta are applied to Oregon with particular reference to the recent election, we find a curious situation.
KLAN IS IGNORED
The most significant and sensational feature of the election was the Ku Klux Klan. From the time ex-Governor Olcott defied the Klan on the eve of the primary, to the time that Governor Pierce in deference to the Klan's demands, issued his memorable Anti-Papal Bull, pledging his support to the Compulsory School bill, the one outstanding news feature was the dominance of this extraordinary organization.
And yet during all this time in at least eighty per cent of the newspapers of Oregon there was not the slightest editorial reference to this amazing development. If a journalist from Mars had happened to have been curious concerning Oregon and had subscribed to eighty per cent of the newspapers during the past year, and had confined himself to the editorials to gain his view of what was, and what was not, agitating the minds of the people of this State, he would not have discovered that such a thing as a Ku Klux Klan had ever existed. He would have read thrilling accounts of the rise and fall of the broccoli crop, the importance of a protective tariff on Chinese eggs, can radium cure cancer, are potatoes fattening, insect life on the upper Orinoco, the virtues of boosting and the vices of Bolshevism, but whether or not the Klan was a good or bad organization, whether or not invisible government, based upon religious intolerance, was desirable or undesirable, whether the Klan was a harmless joke, or a serious menace,—not a word.
FEW INTERPRETED NEWS
I fail to see how any newspaper man can deny that this is, to say the least, a very unusual situation. In my judgment the introduction of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon has been the most sensational, the most dramatic, the most picturesque development in Oregon politics, in the history of this state. It has been nothing short of a political revolu-
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