Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1874 — “Independent” Journalism. [ARTICLE]

“Independent” Journalism.

Having purchased a majority of the stock of the Chicago Tribune Company, the Hon. Joseph Medill has resumed editorial control of that paper. In his article announcing this change he has this to say concerning “independent” journalism and the course the Tribune will pursue in the future: “ But it has seemed to me unwise for a great representative journal, for the purpose of correcting some alleged abuses of administration, to desert its party organization and turn its guns on its old friends, or help into power and place the leaders of the organization whose political records and whose official conduct show that they are insincere in their professions of desire for administrative purification. As a general rule, a man can exercise more influence for good among his friends by remaining en rapport with than by assailing and traducing them. The same rule holds true in regard to newspapers. The Government of the nation must be conducted through the instrumentality of parties. 1 know of no other agency which has succeeded in free countries. The party in the majority must assume the* responsibility of governing. A party is simply a voluntary organization of citizens united to carry into effect certain principles and purposes. It must employ and intrust individuals to collect ana disburse taxes, to perform executive and police duties for protection and security of person and property; men must be engaged to construct public works, carry the mails, administer justice and make and execute laws, and do a thousand other things which the public well-being requires; and these individualswill often prove careless, inefficient or corrupt. But a party whose aims and purposes are good and patriotic, and whose record is grand and glorious, should not be condemned and thrown out of power on account of the defective work or misconduct of a few of its employes, in order to make place for an antagonistic organization whose record cannot be defended, But is regarded with sorrow and shame by its best members, and whose conduct when in power never fails to show that its reformatory professions when out of power are a delusion and a snare. “ Buch being the case in regard to the necessity and machinery of parties in free countries, the press to be useful cannot avoid* being partisan in greater or less degree. If an editor undertakes the role of supporting both sides his position is equivalent to a double affirmative which amounts to a negative; If he habitually, censures and condemns both he is soon regarded as a common scpld and a nuisance. To be entirely unpartisan, leaves him in the condition of a cipher; and when a newspaper under-

takes to be wholly “ independent ” of its party, and yet discuss politics, it is on the nigh road to the camp of its political : opponents, whether its conductor so intended atthe -outset in? deed, he takes refuge in the -coward’s harbor of. neutrality and abdicates bis duties altogether, which is a most contemptible and despicable position. But it is not essential to the prosperity or influence of a party paper that ft should willfully misrepresent its opponents, and behold nothing but evil pud depravity in fill’ their action?, or discover only treat sonable designsin all they propose to do. ' Candor and fairness in the treatment of political opponents will detract nothing from the influence df a paper, nor will it injure the prospects of its own party. “ Such, in brief, are the views I have long entertained of parties and the relations- which the press should bear toward them. A political newspaper, to be of service to the public, must give one party or the other the preference. And, while the Democratic party embraces many excellent and worthy members who would be an honor to any organization, yet I sincerely believe the Republicaii party comprises a much large*proportion of the intelligent and educated classes, of the moral wdrth and business enterprise as well as of the patriotic elements of the nation; ..and therefore the Government of the country and the civil rights of the poor and Wfeak can be more safely and prudently committed to its keeping than to that of its antagonist, whose past history and antecedents furnish so much cause for misgivings and dread of its future behavior. “ Looking, then, at the individual composition of~ the two great parties—all other parties- being mere fragments, ephemeral in duration and narrow in object—and at their respective records and underlying principles, I cannot hesitate to give the decided preference to the Republican party. Hence, the Tribune will be conducted as a Republican journal.”