12 SEPTEMBER 1935, Page 3

* Judgements on the Press Mr. Alan Pitt Bobbins, speaking

as PreSident at the conference of the Institute of Journalists last Monday, lightly deprecated the tendency to judge the journalistic craft as a whole by the 'sins of a few of its members. Ife instanced the question of prying publicity on which the Home Secretary commented some time ago. At the same time journalists themselves are often the first to recognise the .neceSsity of insisting upon certain 'defects in journalism which are damaging to the profession as well as to the reading public—defects many of which are to be traced to methods deliberately pursued by certain controllers of the Press. Nothing is to be gained by keeping silence on such matters. But when the Worst has been said that can be justly said of the British Press, the fact remains that it is on the whole less affected by interested and illicit influences than any other Press in the world, and fully, deserves the compliment that Mr. Baldwin paid it in his letter to the conference.