The First Stone

Where should newspapers draw the line between what is fit to print and what isn't? That question was worrying the St. Louis Star-Times. It had reported the death of a teen-age girl as an "aftermath of tavern-hopping and sex orgy." Would it have been better to suppress this sordid story? In publishing such news, were newspapers themselves helping to make-more?

Publisher Elzey Roberts decided that they were--though some other parties were also guilty. In an editorial he said: "It is time that society as a whole faced the fact that through its negligence and apathy this postwar period has become a hog-wallow of eroticism." He felt that the mud in this wallow was contributed by some movies, fashion designers, plays, radio programs, books, perfume ads and "unwholesome comic strips with provocative poses." He left it to his readers to tell him what should be done.

They told him, with almost embarrassing alacrity--in more than 350 letters. Many suggested that the Star-Times take the beam out of its own eye by cleaning up its comic strips. It couldn't very well do that, said the Star-Times lamely; if it dropped comic strips, they--and their readers--would be snapped up by competitors. It was no use complaining to the syndicates; their attitude was that most of their customers were satisfied, so take it or leave it.

The Star-Times "frequently omits panels and columns which it considers offensive, but rarely does it omit a comic strip, because it breaks the continuity . . . and results in a deluge of protests, usually by telephone." (Last week the paper threw out two panels of a series called Cuties because they were too leggy.) It was not much of an answer. The same sort of excuse could be made by every mass medium the Star-Times had indicted. But at least the Star-Times had cocked a snook at the problem--and then run like hell.

The Louisville Times had also been thinking about its responsibilities. The Times (like many others) now omits "Negro" from its crime-story headlines, the Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported last week. Some time ago, the paper had started printing the names of juveniles arrested for vandalism. Result: "A marked decrease in private-property loss through increased parent discipline." Last but hardly least, the Times prints "names of women charging rape if [the] defendant is found not guilty, [thus] providing justifiable protection for men from frustrated women."

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