There Is A Good Reason For This And The Reason
Is Based On Prudence.
In the first place the private life of a
private individual is a most holy thing, with which the papers
dare not meddle; besides, the paper that printed a faked-up tale
about a private citizen in England would speedily be exposed and
also extensively sued.
As for public men, they are protected by
exceedingly stringent libel laws. As nearly as I might judge,
anything true you printed about an English politician would be
libelous, and anything libelous you printed about him would be true.
It befalls, therefore, as I was told on most excellent authority,
that when the editor of a live London daily finds the local grist
to be dull and uninteresting reading he straightway cables to his
American correspondent or his Paris correspondent - these two being
his main standbys for sensations - asking, if his choice falls on
the man in America, for a snappy dispatch, say, about an American
train smash-up, or a Nature freak, or a scandal in high society
with a rich man mixed up in it. He wires for it, and in reply he
gets it. I have been in my time a country correspondent for city
papers, and I know that what Mr. Editor wants Mr. Editor gets.
As a result America, to the provincial Englishman's understanding,
is a land where a hunter is always being nibbled to death by sheep;
or a prospective mother is being so badly frightened by a chameleon
that her child is born with a complexion changeable at will and
an ungovernable appetite for flies; or a billionaire is giving a
monkey dinner or poisoning his wife, or something.
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