When we read detailed accounts of the appearance of prisoners, verbatim reports of their most insignificant utterances; when we are given details of their meals; when we are told that one prisoner is dressed with scrupulous care, and that the affection existing between two other prisoners was very apparent to those in court; when we have a picture of the judge passing sentence amidst sobbing women; when piquant details of past careers are dragged to light, and the various amiable or vicious points commented upon, although having absolutely no bearing whatever upon the case under consideration—then we cannot avoid the conclusion that the main object of all the report is to sell the paper. It would be impossible to give the public such information regarding the demeanour and tone of witnesses or prisoners as to enable them to form a really just and reliable idea; while it is quite possible and a very frequent practice to be just graphic enough to make the public fancy that they are in a position not only to criticise and speculate, but to dogmatise, and even to protest vehemently against the verdict of a jury and the sentence of a judge, deliberately given after a long and careful inquiry, in which the prisoner had the benefit of counsel learned in every intricacy and subtlety of the law. The practice of giving detailed descriptions of the personal appearance and social habits of criminals, which are now acknowledged features of newspaper reporting, has a tendency to invest the prisoners with something of a meretricious glory, which ought to be condemned by all properly minded people.
If crime has been committed, it is surely injurious to the public morals to write or publish anything calculated to elicit misplaced sympathy, and it is a poor trade to pander to morbid curiosity. If people fairly appreciated not only the wickedness and horror of crime, but its almost invariable meanness, pettiness, and misery, its feverish restlessness, its ever-haunting dread of detection—crime would be robbed of much of its semi-heroic character, and would cease to prove so attractive a bait to those who gloat over its every detail. It is common to speak of ‘great’ criminals as distinguished from the vulgar herd; but there is never anything great in crime. Graphic pens pandering to vulgar curiosity may produce a passing interest of even absorbing intensity; the crime and the criminal may form a nine days’ wonder; but the end comes; and as soon as the convict dress is donned, the erstwhile man is degraded into a mere automaton, a mere numeral, and is utterly dead to the outside world; while if the scaffold should be his destined finale, the only thing which survives the wretched criminal is his infamy.