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Rappahannock News
Published Thursday Morning at
Washington, Rappahannock
County, Virginia
Dial Washington 2851
LUCY CATHERINE BOWIE
Publisher
Entered as second-class mail matter at the post office at Washington, Virginia.
Subscription: __(2.00 a year
What we obtain too cheap,
we esteem too lightly; it it
dearness only that gives
everything its value—Payne.
Double Standard Prevails
In Judging ‘Timid’ Editor
Sometimes this business of what to print and what to omit in the way of news stories becomes a bit confusing. It becomes more confusing when the weekly press is chastised for being “timid" by a daily press which does the same thing on a larger seal.
It was (well-known that the late President Roosevelt suffered a great deal due to the crippling re-t suits of polio. Photographers and newspapermen were careful to avoid reference to his defection. That was fitting and proper. ,
Cut is the weekly newspaperman timid when he “overlooks" a similarly uninfportant detail about a local resident—for instance, in the writing -pf an obituary about a, local resident who had a club foot?
Those critics of the press who single out the rural press for special attention would think so.
There is another example:
Recently President “let it slip" in a press conference that General MacArthur was going to demand the North Korean surrender. Then he prevailed upon the newsmen to withhold the release untilitcame from Tokyo. The newsman did.
But the town council meets and one of the members lets out a hint about a story that the mayor was preparing to proclaim officially in a later issue of the paper. Of course, you don’t print the story. Are you thereby derelict in your duty to your readers—or to the paper? We think not but a lot of our critics might. *
We believe that there is a great deal of unnecessary timidity in all newspapering—and it is probably true that the weekly press is more guilty than any other.
But we also believe that everything must be viewed in the proper perspective. If it was proper to avoid mention of the late President Roosevelt’s affliction—and it was—it is proper to avoid mentioning similar facts about a smalltown resident who might never be known beyond the town limits.
If it is proper to co-operate with President Truman in the withholding of a story for a more appropriate time of release, it is proper to co-operate with your mayor, or the grocer or the gal down the street who got married secretly in a nearby state and does
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