Tax Publicity

The Supreme Court has decided (TIME, June 8, TAXATION) that newspapers, if they want to, may publish income-tax returns laid open to public inspection by the Government in accordance with the tax law. But do the newspapers want to do so? And should they? And will they?

Editor and Publisher, trade paper of journalism, put the question: "Will you?" to the newspapers of the country and published their answers. It also gave its own opinion:

"Just where is the line to be drawn in printing news ? . . . For instance, a newspaper might for conscience' sake spare a man from the gossip of his neighbors concerning his financial inability, yet tear out his vitals by publishing the disgrace of a loved one. A woman's financial standing is held inviolate, but the same instrument which protects her name in that respect would not suppress her moral downfall if public record were made of the fact."

The following lists give the replies of some of the more important newspapers:

Will Publish the Returns:

All Hearst Papers. "Of course the Hearst , papers will. ..."

All Scripps-Howard papers.

All press associations except the Associated Press (the largest).

The New York Times. "The Times is in the habit of printing all the news it can lay its hands on.

The New York World. "They're news, aren't they?"--Herbert B. Swope, Executive Editor.

The Chicago Tribune.

The Kansas City Journal-Post.* /-

The Kansas City Star.

The Des Moines Register.

The Cincinnati Times-Star.

The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.

The Denver Post.

The St. Paul Daily News.

The Pittsburgh Sun.*

The Pittsburgh Post.*

The St. Louis Globe Democrat.*

The Boston Post.

The Houston Chronicle.

The Boise Idaho Statesman.

The Tacoma News-Tribune.

The Baltimore Evening Sun.*

The Raleigh News and Observer. "We printed the names and amounts paid by all whose incomes exceeded $5,000 and would have been liable if the Supreme Court had not held that the returns were public."-- Josephus Daniels, Editor.

The Atlanta Constitution.

Will Not Publish the Returns:

The Associated Press.

The Curtis Papers (in chief, The New York Evening Post and Philadelphia Public Ledger).

The Vanderbilt papers (in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami). "A section of the press of America has long lived and prospered by invading the rights of the individual with a ruthlessness that would do credit to a Hindenburg. By them that valuable guarantee 'Freedom of the Press' has become a meaningless hackneyed byword. To them, printing the amount of a man's income will probably mean no more than commercializing the sorrow of a murderer's mother or the innocent family of a prostitute." -- Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., Proprietor.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune. "New Orleans papers will not. ..."

The Springfield (Mass.) Union.

The Philadelphia Record.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The St. Paul Dispatch.

The Portland (Me.) Express.

The Ohio State Journal.

The Columbus Dispatch.

The Minneapolis Tribune.

The Louisville Courier-Journal.

More or Less Equivocal:

The Schaffer papers (in chief, Chicago Evening Post, Indianapolis Star, Denver Times, Rocky Mountain News). "What the other papers in our locality do."--John C. Schaffer, Proprietor.

Buffalo News. "No decision. ..."

Omaha Bee. "Not unless forced to by competition. . . ."

Omaha World-Herald. "Conservative . . . what public interest demands. . . ."

Portland Orcgonian. "Invasion of the right of privacy. ..."

Portland Oregon Journal. "News value and public policy will govern."

The Oklahoman and Times, Oklahoma City. "Intrusion. . . . We will not dig out daily lists of taxes on everybody. . . . Exceptions. ... A few outstanding men and women."

The Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Cannot say definitely."

The Cleveland Times. "Not likely of any more interest than other tax returns. . . ."

San Francisco Bulletin. "Hopes the practice will not be forced on newspapers. . . ."

The Birmingham News. "Guided by news values . . . business ethics."

The Springfield (Mass.) Republican. "With judgment of news value."

Publicynicism

News editors are very weary of being wary. Theirs is an eternal vigilance. To them, everyday is April 1. Only those born in Missouri survive to a ripe old age. Suspicion must become their second nature. The public expects them to be omniscient, omni-accurate. Yet the public conceals facts from them, distorts facts to them, lies to them outright, plays jokes upon them. The good citizen with a "cause" brings propaganda to their desks. Public men lie to the press as an aid to their digestion. Reporters, the emissaries hired by editors to keep them accurately informed, put upon them out of carelessness, laziness and pure imagination. Picture agencies furnish them with false photographs (TIME, Apr. 20, LETTERS). News services lie to them from afar, out of reach of their investigation. And press agents are paid to deceive them.

Under this curse, pathetically enough, editors writhe in impotent anger. One can understand, therefore, the intense feeling with which an editor of The New York World sat down, last week, penned these words:

"The worst of it, no doubt, is the publicity involved. To the average person, this might not mean much, but to a moving-picture actress, already much in the public eye, it must be particularly distasteful. Of course, we may be thankful that the plot was discovered before any damage was done--except the publicity. But even so, there is danger that the thing will become an epidemic. That is, enterprising press agents, now that the jewel-theft scheme has pretty well worn out, may try to fake kidnapping plots and in that way get their employers' names in the paper."

This was his reaction to a dispatch that had every indication of veracity; a story that, in Los Angeles, three men had been arrested, that the police had been tipped off and, shadowing them, had heard them plotting to kidnap for $100,000 ransom first Mary Pickford, then Pola Negri, Buster Keaton and a four-year-old grandson of Edward L. Doheny, oil magnate. The story came with apparent veracity of circumstance. One or more of the prisoners was reported to have confessed; they faced long prison terms for criminal conspiracy.

The World printed the story, but not prominently. Other editors, less cynical, printed the account in full with prominence on their first or second pages. Time will prove whether or not the story was veracious.

If the attorney of the prisoners were acute, he might conceivably try to get a jury of editors and maintain to them that his clients were hired to conspire as a press agent stunt. Editors would believe him every time. But they would vote to convict.

Villager

Last week, at Cambridge University, a certain distinguished American professor registered chagrin. The professor was presumably in his library. Piled neatly on the library table were some papers and magazines, all European publications, except one.

The professor had: been looking through his U. S. mail, and it was concerning that one publication, the only U. S. publication to 'which he subscribed, that he was downcast.

He held the most recent number of it in his hand and, as he read, he learned that it was the last copy he, or anyone else, would receive.

The paper was The Villager, four-page weekly published by Samuel Strauss and Kate Parsons at Katonah (Westchester County), N. Y. The distinguished professor and other subscribers recalled how Samuel Strauss, onetime treasurer of The New York Times, another time publisher of The New York Globe, had "cut loose" and stood "a little off," not so much geographically as mentally, "to contribute something to the Department of Reflective Journalism." That was eight years ago, and the Villager's idea was to try to come at, the forces in motion beneath the facts of troublesome wartime. Unembellished by pictures, headlines or advertisements, the four pages had offered amiable musings upon broad political and broader national issues: upon Art, Literature, even Manhattan Architecture and the conversation of shopgirls in subway trains as suggestive of the cycle through which this and other countries were passing. In the writing, there was a rich personal flavor, informal yet dignified, unhurried but never verbose. Each issue was a monolog by an unprejudiced ruminative man who was as likely to weave into his discourse some bright strand of slang as some fibrous or silken or homespun thread from Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Mark Rutherford, Andrew Marvell.

The Villager said that it was discontinuing, not from any delinquency among the subscribers, for "personal" journalism needs no promotion manager to retain the attention of its unsolicited clientele, but because wartime has passed. "It is, as a matter of fact, only in this last year or so that there has begun in earnest the relaxation toward that state of men's minds which is--let us suppose it is, anyway--best fitted for peace time, when vision falls back from its high point and must be supplemented by understanding."

From The Villager's point of view, the tendency now to be understood is Industrialism, and upon this subject Editor Strauss wants more than a week 'for the preparation of his monologs. What new form The Villager might take--fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annual--was not announced. The subscribers were simply promised refunds on their $2 subscriptions and The Villager ended as quietly as it began.

* Declared also for repeal of the tax publicity law.

/- One of the two papers just acquitted in the test case by the Supreme Court.