THE DOG IN THE NEWS
- • [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] am-rather distressed to see that a contributor to the Spectator, Mr. Wilson McCarty, in your issue of the lath, should repeat yet once again the very silliest saying that has ever been put out as a newspaper maxim : " If a dog bites a man," 8w. This is quoted with maddening insistence in America, and is always attributed to the late Charles A. Dana, the famous editor of the old New York Sun. Dana was a great journalist. He can never have said anything so inane and so baldly contrary to fact. How does it happen that journalists keep it alive ? If a man bites a dog, it is, of course, not news at all. But if a dog should bite even so modest a citizen as the small-town mayor or the .chairman of the Rotary Club, it is news. If the victim were Herbert Hoover or Henry Ford, Gloria SOranson or Helen Wills, it would be the biggest news of the day.'. I am; -Sir, &c., S. K. RATCLIFFE. 158 Haverstoek Hill-, N.W.
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