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Press Sensationalism.

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Again we see the same old spirit in the daily press, which is the outcome of, we know not what; love of sensation, desire to find some victim on whom they may pitch without fear of retaliation, jealousy, all these come in as partial causes. The result we know; exaggeration of the failings of college men, belittling of their virtues. If any little fracas occurs in a college town, if there is any unfortunate disturbance, at a ball, for instance, of course it is college men to whom it must be laid, and even if it is not quite certain that they are to blame it makes such a very spicy article for a paper. Is it not a proof on the face of it, of its unlikelihood, that such an item is copied all over the country? People think it is strange - it is surprising - no doubt it is, but does any of them think that its strangeness bears, maybe, some witness to its unlikelihood, that the astonishment which they feel at reading it is perhaps a proof of its exaggeration? No. They accept it as true, and hold up their hands in pious horror at the doings of these college men, perhaps even while they are reading some other article in the same paper and wondering whether there really can be any truth in that. College life is not so black nor are college men so hardened as they are painted, especially not so when a poor artist in the shape of a sensational reporter uses upon the pictures a brush which has not been carefully cleansed from that pigment which should be confined to political campaigns alone and which is called in plain English - mud. -[Yale Courant.

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