PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

That an undergraduate publication is qualified to speak with authority on the finer points of ethics in journalism is obviously open to doubt. Where, however, the issue is a more flagrant violation of a professional code than the worst advertisements of a medico, there seems no reason why any newspaper should be constrained to silence. The issue at point, while involving a tabloid paper in its local manifestation, is not to be classed with the usual frivolities of those publications; in brief, it concerns the statement, with no indication of doubt or other qualification, that a woman under sentence of death for murder has been visited by two ghosts-the first, and apparently more important, that of Mr. Valentino, accompanied by the husband of the prisoner. This was in headlines, so that he who runs may read and return home awed by this public confirmation of the supernatural.

The somewhat commonplace conversation which took place, between the spectres and the condemned woman, even the gratuitous insult to the memory of the dead actor, fade into insignificance compared to the manner in which the tale is told. Here is the printing press used not for the dissemination of knowledge but for the spreading of blind terror and superstitions resorting not to mere vulgarity but taking a malicious advantage of ignorance and credulity. For one assumes that these editors are acquainted with their public, and have no intention of making themselves ridiculous in the eyes of their readers. If this assumption is correct, no excuse whatever can be found for those who are driven in their search for headlines beyond the bounds of the ludicrous and inane into the territory of the monstrous.