may be his ignorance.”  A larger proportion of the great mass of books yearly published are mere trash, appealing to untrained readers, and only confirming them in unwarranted beliefs and opinions.  Few there are who are really fit to teach the public; and of those there are fewer still who love truth more than the triumph of their opinion, who are candid, scrupulous, and exact in their statements.  There is doubtless little conscious deception; but there is a great deal of misstatement which is inexcusable, and due either to slovenliness, lack of proper training, or partisanship.

This brings us to the similar and even graver evils in our modern newspapers, which we must pause to study in somewhat greater detail.  For nowhere is untruthfulness so rampant and so shameless as in contemporary journalism.  The ethics of journalism.

(1) The gravest evil, perhaps, in journalistic practice is the suppression or distortion of news in the interest of political parties and “big business.”  It is impossible to rely on the political information given in most of our newspapers; they are dominated by a party, subservient to “the interests,” afraid to publish anything that will offend them.  They misrepresent facts, give prejudiced accounts of events, gloss over occurrences unfavorable to their ends, circulate unfounded rumors to create opinion, pounce upon every flaw in the records of opponents,- going often to the point of shameless libel,- while eulogizing indiscriminately the politicians of their own party.  Many of them cannot be counted on to attack corruption or politically protected vice.  They are organs neither of an impartial truth seeking nor of public service.  However conscientious the reporters and editors might wish to be, they are bound, by the fear of dismissal, to follow the policy of the owners.

(2) No less reprehensible, though somewhat less important, is the toadying of the newspapers to their advertisers.  The average paper could not exist were it not for this source of income, and it cannot afford to refuse the big advertisements even when they are pernicious to the morals or health of the community.  So we are confronted daily by the premedicine fakirs, who injure the health and drain the pocketbooks of the guileless.  So we are exposed to the plausible suggestions of the swindlers, feasted with glowing prospectuses of mines that will never yield a dividend, or eulogistic descriptions of house lots to be sacrificed at a price that is really double their worth.  In a recent postal raid the financial frauds exposed had fleeced the public of nearly eighty million dollars, about a third of which had been spent in advertising.

Not only do the newspapers accept such advertisements, and those of the brewers, the cigarette-makers, and the proprietors of vile theaters, but they do not dare in their columns to denounce these frauds or undesirable trades.  They are muzzled because they cannot afford to tell the truth when it will offend those who supply their revenue.