Liberty's Muddy Fountain
Sul,— Isn't the answer to the question raised by Mr Ludovic Kennedy in his Moors Murder article simply that any harm done by the detailed reporting of such horrors arises not from the details themselves, but from the negative moral atmosphere in which the press feels obliged to report them?
Victorian reporters would have been more inhibited, of course. But they covered some pretty bloody and macabre cases with a frankness that would surprise people who haven't looked at the old files, and murder trials were reported much more fully in those days than they are now--often verbatim. This could he done without danger because Victorian editors could assume a solid popular sentiment of reprobation of crime, founded in an authoritative ethic that involved reason and free will. Murder was wrong not merely because it was 'anti-social.' Behind their ghastliest horrors, however remote, was the red glare of hell fire. That was salutary.
Now we are supposed to confront such things in a hare of uncertainty whether the whole of society isn't somehow or other -guilty of every atrocity -that gets into the papers, or whether we really have the right to blame anybody for anything. The press is too much 'with it' to reflect moral indignation---at hest, its judgments wilt be merely inconclusive sociological ones.
PETER KNIGHT The Roost, Stole Gabriel, Totnev, Devon
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