Nothing, apparently, lays so severe a strain on the popular
daily paper's canons of taste as a disaster like the destruction of the Imperial Airways liner. I can conceive nothing more ghoulish than the established practice of rushing off a reporter to interview or, failing that, to ring up, the bereaved wife or husband or mother of some victim of the disaster. Obviously in nine cases out of ten they have, nothing to say of the smallest public interest, but the spectacle of private grief dragged into the public eye is apparently a selling proposition, and to be able to say that "the first news of the disaster was conveyed to the widow of the deceased by a Daily --- reporter-". sends a news editor home happy for the night. The Daily Express., I observe, has peculiarly distinguished itself on this occasion. Of the pilot's wife, after the inevitable interview : " The broken-hearted woman could say no more." Of the engineer's wife : " His young wife came to the door laughing with her baby in her arms when a Daily Express representative called at her home last night. The news that there had been a disaster sent her as white as a sheet. ' Is he . . . ? ' she asked " (this bonne bouche in black type). Are there no decent reticences to be observed ? Must every private sanctity be violated because the public wants it For that matter, does the public even want it ?
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