“A newspaper,” wrote Josiah Ward, “is a sacred business… it doesn’t belong to the men who run it or to those who own the plant. The press belongs to the public, to the people. To get the news, you may kill, steal, burn, cheat, lie; but never sell out your paper in thought or deed.”
Ward was the editor of Denver Republican, an American newspaper in the 1920s.
These words were told in a fit of anger to a reporter (Gene Fowler) for committing “an indiscretion in the paper’s name”. Reporting news is really a serious, sacred business. Journalism is not only a laborious craft. For it just doesn’t take grit, determination, years of painstaking, dare-devil courage, a nose (and an eye) for the news to get good journalism on newspaper pages and on the airwaves. It also takes a good mind and a big, fat conscience and good judgment too.
Historical accounts are kinder to Fowler whose big story about how big businessmen in Denver arm-twisted the governor into suppressing a miners’ strike was “killed” by the newspaper publisher. To validate Ward’s assertion that the newspaper belonged to the people, Denver Republican thereafter folded up. But few media houses learnt lessons from this incident.
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