NEWSPAPER REPORTING
SIR,—As another journalist, I feel that Jossleyn Hennessy has given a squalid defence of journalists who intrude on private grief in the way justly complained of by Professor Pigou. He says: "Those who should be attacked are not correspondents who have no alternative save to obtain what their editors and proprietors require of them." But they have a very clear and simple alternative. They can refuse to obey such odious instructions. Mr. Hennessy's argument of "no alternative" save to do what they are told would justify the instant acquittal of every Nazi war- criminal. Refusal to obey might cost them their jobs, but this, surely,. is a question of conscience, from whose dictates journalists are no more exempt than the collaborating traitors of the war. Incidentally, it is a novel view to me that proprietors of newspapers are therefore the " proprietors " of the journalists they employ.—Yours, &c.,
Press Club, Salisbury Square, B.C. 4. HORACE THOROGOOD.
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