BIG MONEY SLAYS NEWSPAPER ETHICS, ASSERTS VILLARD

"Modern daily journalism has become a highly systematized business enter prise, conducted on the chain store principle, with money-making as its aim," decleared Oswald Garrison Villard '93, editor of The Nation, in his address at Phillips Brooks House last night, Mr. Villard asserted that this state of affairs gave little room for the existence of ethics in journalism, announced as the topic of his talk.

"Ethics take their in place in journalism only when the press realizes that it is affected by a sense of public interest," continued Mr. Villard. "A feeling of responsibility toward readers, of purveying to them accurate and unblassed news on all questions is the basis of newspaper ethics.

"In the early days of anti-slavery campaigning American journalism, actuated by a Keen realization of this responsibility, was at its best. Journalism was a profession, and was regarded by its practitioners as a profession of high honor and duty.

"Now journalism has entered the field of big business. Large chains of newspapers have been formed, and the press of the country may eventually come into the control of a very few men. The same situation is seen in England, where one or two groups control every newspaper in Great Britain.

"This highly capitalized system admits no sense of responsibility toward the public. News and editorials are colored with a view toward the satisfaction of money-making ends. There are, however, several notable experiments tending aainst this principle. The Jewish Daily Forward, published in several large American cities, is the most noteworthy of these. The successful paper devotes its gains to altruistic aims, and has practically demonstrated how a paper can be run with no financial profit. Until general recognition is made of this fact, journalistic ethics, in the true sense of the term, will be honored rather in the breach than in the observance in the daily newspapers of America."