(Baker Herald)
THE HERALD'S NEWS PRINCIPLES
You can edit a class organ to suit yourself. But a newspaper holds a trust to give the news as it occurs, not as you want it to be.
While the Baker Herald believes that Dr. Bulgin is doing a great deal of good, we cannot agree with him in some of his statements. Many of our readers hold this same opinion. The Herald is publishing reports of the Bulgin meetings because, it being a newspaper, believes in reporting events as they occur. The fact that four local church organizations have erected a tabernacle and nearly a thousand people are attending these meetings every night, constitutes an event that from an unbiased news standpoint demands recognition.
On the other hand, because the Herald reports the Bulgin meetings it is in no way sponsor for them. The Herald had nothing to do with Dr. Bulgin's coming to Baker. He has come and his meetings are considered a source of news. When a newspaper reports the story of a fire, it is not responsible for the fire. When a newspaper reports a murder trial, it is not the cause of the murder. When a newspaper reports a Sunday baseball game there are no grounds to charge that the newspaper is in favor of Sunday baseball any more than when a newspaper relates a story of a moonshine raid, that it is in favor of the bootleggers.
When any so-called newspaper censors its news, printing only the things it wants the people to read and withholds facts it wants them to be ignorant of, it is not a newspaper. * * *
This pledge, and this one only, do we make. That in as far as our judgment will enable us to analyze various circumstances, we pledge to every resident of eastern Oregon that we will be independent, fair and above board in reporting the news of each day as it occurs. * * *
So when you read something in the news columns of the Baker Herald that you do not like, remember that the articles which please you most may give offense to someone else. We are not publishing a counterfeit newspaper. * * *
Now if you don't like Bulgin, and if you don't like to read the Herald's reports of the Bulgin meetings, don't read them. There are many other things every night in the Baker Herald that you will like. Perhaps some of them Bulgin and his supporters don't like. Let us get out of the habit of thought that we can have everything our own way in this world. The Editor long since became discouraged in trying to please everybody. We try to publish the Herald according to the best principles we know, according to the American principle of free, unhampered expression of opinion, and unbiased fair treatment of news. In a business way we try to operate on a basis of merit and service. We hope you think more of us than if we were made up of jelly fish stuff and printed the Herald in invisible ink on transparent paper.
By I. V. McADOO,
Editor The Scio Tribune
There is not much that an editor can do, it seems, to make the world a better and brighter place in which to live; at least there is a tendency of the profession to make it darker. Not a day passes but that on the front page, in bold letters, appears the unhappiness of the home or homes of our people. Would it not be wise and surely sane for our editors to really practice the code of ethics which we adopted at the January meeting, and not make it the laughing stock and charge of insincerity that it is now bringing upon itself? What good does it do to make a profession and then immediately follow in the old footsteps—can the people be led to believe we are sincere? I think not, and as soon as all editors see it that way, the press will begin to make itself felt. Suppose some of the weaker of our population does clamor for the base and the lewd; does that warrant the paper in insulting and poisoning the mind of those who are against such? Again I think not.
[11]
