The Daily Picayune New Orleans - Friday, April 5, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
VOX POPULI.
Correspondence Which Speaks for
Itself.
The Picayune a Family Paper.
Editor Picayune: Allow a father of a family to commend your high regard for good morals in refraining from publication of the turpitudes of the Wilde-Queensberry trial in London. While other newspapers are giving sensational headings and conspicuous space to the disgusting details, the Picayune decently spurns such immoral trash from its columns. Your paper has always been a welcome and valued guest at my home, and it will ever be cordially greeted, because I know that there never will appear in its carefully edited columns the slightest equivocal articles that would shock young and susceptible people. My daughters, three yet in their teens, are eager readers of the dear old '"Pic," and I feel perfectly secure while they peruse its columns, knowing full well that no mentor could better instruct them. With great esteem, yours very sincerely. OLD CREOLE.
No Place for Beastly Filth.
Editor Picayune: As a life-long subscriber of the Picayune, allow me to express my thanks to the paper for having omitted from its columns the filthy details of the Wilde-Queensberry libel litigation now in progress in London. I am the father of a large family of daughters, who are reading girls, and I would not for the world have had the disgusting accounts of the trial placed before them. This affair proves conclusively that the Picayune is, indeed, a family newspaper and that there is no danger in placing it in the hands of young women. It is all very well to give the news of the day as it happens, but there is no necessity of indulging in matters which are revolting to all sense of decency and propriety. When the St. James Gazette of London, the scene of the trial, refuses to publish the testimony for the benefit of its interested readers, it can safely be assumed that they are of such a nature as to be unfit for publication in a reputable journal. I feel confident that the Picayune's course in this matter will meet with the unanimous approbation of the good people of this city. LAWYER.
Free from Immorality.
Editor Picayune: The mission of the press is supposed to be the elevation of the people. I pity a construction of that mission which deemed it within the duty of journalism to print the disgusting details of the London libel suit. I congratulate you upon having had the moral courage to omit the filth. In view of a certain class of public taste which devours with avidity all such literature, and in view of the fact that a newspaper is printed to make money, the sacrifice was all the braver and the more commendable. CRITIC.