Decency

The American Society of Newspaper Editors aims to be to journalism what the American Bar Association is to the legal fraternity.

Its first annual meeting in Washington was made notable by the adoption of a code of ethics. The more specific sections are:

1) Against press agenting: "Socalled news communications from private sources should not be published without public notice of their source.

2) "Headlines should be fully warranted by the contents of the articles which they surmount."

3) " A newspaper should not invade private rights or feelings without sure warrant of public right, as distinguished from public curiosity."

4) " A newspaper has no right to publish a private statement ascribed to its author without his permission."

The final clause of the code reads: " A newspaper cannot escape conviction of insincerity if, while professing high moral purpose, it supplies incentives to base conduct, such as are to be found in details of crime and vice, publication of which is not demonstrably for the general good. Lacking authority to enforce its canons, the journalism here represented can but express the hope that deliberate pander to vicious instincts will encounter effective public disapproval or yield to the influence of a preponderant professional condemnation."

H. S. Wright of The New York Globe, Herbert Bayard Swope of The New York World, Casper Yost of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat are conspicuous defenders of the new faith.