Page Twenty
THE UNITED AMERICAN
■M g
of men and women prominent in the case) in connection with
crime has the effect of encouraging crime or lowering moral
standards ?
That crime “news” development has had a depreci
ating influence an the public mind cannot be disputed
for there are too many evident circumstances of a
lowered moral standard of life as a direct result of
overcolored news of crime and moral perversities.
When the Hearst newspapers, some years ago, led
the pace in picturing crime details, many high class
dailes refused to follow suit. Gradually these dailies
have copied this plan and are today as specific respect
ing details of every kind of crime, as we recall the
Hearst’s San Francisco paper, for instance, used to be
some fifteen years ago when sensational newswriting
was young. If there was an added sales value to the
newspaper featuring crime, certainly those who at
first were bold enough to inaugurate this “style” can
claim no monopoly on the idea for it has become very
general, in fact the products of the originators are
paling into insignificance in comparison with the
products of those who at first displayed timidity in
introducing sordid crime news in their journals.
Every little misdemeanor, brought to the attention
of the police, is elaborated upon, shaded and colored
and motives and suppositions galore are injected into
it at every angle, even before the case has been looked
into sufficiently to warrant positive connection of an
individual detained in connection with the crime in
question. Atrocities and monstrocities are apparently
fashioned and manufactured by some news-writers in
order to stimulate the daily sale. But such “news”
has a tendency to. develop a canny crime consciousness
in the minds of the young and untrained.
A crime reporting newspaper, delivering sordid
details of murder, theft, immorality and delinquency,
has no place in the American home where children
are being sheltered against contaminating influences.
*
*
. ♦
What has been overlooked in the news features in
the daily press or, perhaps, what has been impossible
to give a naked expression in word-pictures, is now
being amply colored through motion pictures.
The screen-play producers are going the crime news
compilers one better. They detail crime in visualized
form. Every known form of depravity is pictured,
planning and execution, in all their sordid details. Im
morality, as an ally to crime, in undermining society,
is screened with so many “leads” that the point of en
tertainment is adroitly overdone to the extent that the
“show” becomes a school of mental training for crime
and immorality understanding. Whether it produces a
deterrent or an incentive is a subject of much dis
cussion. But few can really be thought naive enough
to be seriously in doubt.
In the advertising columns of the daily newspapers
appear today, with regularity, enlarged “scenes” of
compromising positions, between men and women,
positions pictured for no other purpose than to create
the supposition that unusually bold scenes are a part
of the “coming” photo-play, positions with an alluring
sex-appeal, positions that invariably are not permitted
screened.
If a small dealer should advertise a bargain price on
“woolens” that were found to contain cotton, the Better
JUNE 1925
Business Bureau would have him prosecuted for
swindle. But the page-size photo-play advertisement
with as sordid a sex-scene as can possibly be printed,
leaving nothing further to tell, is not objected to,
though the pictured scene, aside from being a gross
misrepresentation, fashioned for the purpose of at
tracting attention, contains a mental suggestion favor
ing loose morals.
If many of the advance agent’s, “scenes” of a com
ing photo-play, displayed in the advertisements appear
ing on the pages of the daily papers, were clipped out
and pasted on a private mailing card and sent through
the United States Mails, the sender would promptly be
arrested and tried for violation of the federal law
against sending obscene matter through the mails.
Yet the newspapers printing this kind of illustrated
advertisements are never held liable for breaking the
same law in the same way.
*
*
*
Headed by the Christian Science Monitor, several
American newspapers are now taking a definite stand
for the suppression of all news tending to feature
crime as something with a lure, something of an en
ticing sport with plenty of thrills for those who crave
excitement and unrestrained freedom.
Let us hope that this is the beginning of a definite
action in the direction of an American journalistic
renaissance.
Much of the business in this age is built upon a wrong
basis; that of selfishness and self-gain. When we work
with the law of giving, loving, and radiating abundance,
man’s business will be a glorious success, and there will be
no sorrow added thereto.
—Anon.
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