Confessional

The public was surprised, gratified last week when the readers of the Chicago Daily Tribune declined that paper's offer to broadcast the Loeb-Leopold murder-trial proceedings. The public was further surprised, further gratified when the Tribune editors took counsel over this rebuff, recovered their poise, came out with an open confession of the journalistic soul and a sincere proposal for reform that would have done credit to the most reputable paper in the land.

Said The Tribune:

"Criminal justice in America is now a Roman holiday. The courts are in the Colosseum. The state's attorney's office often is an open torture room of human souls. Exposure of the processes of justice, originally a public safeguard, has been perverted into a public danger. They have been exploited as a field of popular amusement. They are a rich for- age for sensation mongers and the yellow press. Their publicity uncontrolled is debasing American thought. It is contributing to the delinquency of criminal justice. . . .

"The injury to justice is in publicity before the trial. Newspaper trials before the case is called have become an abomination. The dan- gerous initiative that newspapers have taken in judging and convicting out of court is journalistic lynch law. It is mob murder or mob ac- quittal in all but the overt act. It is mob appeal. Prosecuting attorneys now hasten to the papers with their theories and confessions. Defense attorneys do the same. Neither dare do otherwise. Half wit juries or prejudiced juries are the inevitable result. . . .

"The Tribune has its share of blame in this. No newspaper can escape it. They have met demand, and in meeting it stimulated public appetite for more. . . .

"General reform must be undertaken or none at all. The nation's press must act together.

"There is one remedy. Drastic restriction of publicity before the trial must be imposed by law. England by custom and by law imposes such restrictions. English papers print only the briefest and coolest statement of the facts before the trial. Three papers there were fined heavily not long ago for news reports that to us were mild. Publicity before the trial should be restricted, it may be, to official statements by police or state's attorney. If that be unfair to the defense, some other rule should be worked out. It is a problem suitable for the American Bar Association to take up. In conjunction with representatives of the press a fair but stringest law could be devised. . . .

The Tribune advocates and will accept drastic restriction of this preliminary publicity. . . .

"This must be balanced by full publicity for the trial itself. The hard-won principle of public justice cannot be denied. No matter what the sacrifice, the administration of justice in principle must be public. The wider that publicity, the better."