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University Daily Kansan Friday, Feb. 10, 1961
To an Anxious Friend
You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that you can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people—and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive. That is the history of the race. It is proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice.
Peace is good. But if you are interested in peace through force and without free discussion—that is to say, free utterance decently and in order—your interest in justice is slight. And peace without justice is tyranny, no matter how you sugar-coat it with expedition. This state today is in more danger from suppression than from violence, because, in the end, suppression leads to violence. Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to keep the peace; and whoever tramples on the plea for justice temperately made in the name of peace only outrages peace and kills something fine in the heart of man which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line.
So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by posted card, by letter, or by press. Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
William Allen White
William Allen White
Pulitzer Prize Editorial
July 27, 1922
Letters and the UDK
Once in awhile the UDK receives a letter criticizing its news coverage, charging that a reporter misquoted a news source, or that the paper is guilty of biased reporting.
They are printed. All letters are printed, without editorial comment, that are signed, and are in good taste, have some valid point to make, or have some legitimate criticism. We are not particularly fond of hair shirts or crow but we welcome criticism, painful as it may be, because honest criticism is the only way we know how well we are fulfilling our responsibility.
BUT SOMETIMES WE PRINT LETTERS that do not meet any of the above requirements —letters that most newspapers would not print.
Yesterday, a letter was printed that began, "In light of the one-sided coverage of Tuesday's ASC meeting by the UDK and the resulting fact that the students received only a part of what went on concerning Spectrum at the meeting..."
The reason for mentioning these letters is to show that the reader is often guilty of a greater mistake or error than any newspaper would ever make. That is, making a statement or charge that has no factual basis whatsoever.
These letters are serious charges against the integrity of the UDK and its staff — and the charges are without foundation.
Three members of the UDK staff attended the ASC meeting in question and took notes on the proceedings. The story took the better part of the night to write. It was checked and re-checked to make certain the statements reported were accurate before they appeared in the paper. As to the charge of "one-sided coverage," "biased opinions," and "We are God attitude." only the writer of the letters knows what he means.
"YELLOW JOURNALISM" REFERS TO the dark period of American newspaper history when news was manufactured, stories overplayed and bigger headlines yielded bigger circulations.
The UDK letter writer who made this charge was referring to this paper's coverage of the racial discrimination issue in Lawrence. Had he carefully checked all UDK stories related to this situation, he would have found that all were legitimate news stories, carefully written to present both sides and to make certain the size of the story was proportionate to its value. There has been no editorializing in straight news stories nor any agitating articles—only the reporting of events as they happened.
Why print these letters then? If they are misleading, in error and more harmful than beneficial to the UDK, why should we print them?
BECAUSE THE UDK IS THE UNIVERSITY
BECAUSE THE UDK IS THE UNIVERSITY newspaper for every student, and no matter how critical the letters may be the student must be guaranteed his right to criticize as much as it is the paper's right to print the news. The right of the people to be informed is insured by the first amendment to the United States Constitution.
Letters to the editor usually negate one another—one writer takes a position and is answered by another. But when gross errors are made, such as the ones cited, we feel they must be answered by the UDK itself.
The Editors
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"WORTHAL-HOW MANY TIMES MUST I SAY 'NO' TO CONVINCE YOU?"
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trifweekly 1908, dally Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Association of N.Y. News service; United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sunday. Req. and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
John Peterson ... Managing Editor
Bill Blundell, Carrie Edwards, Lynn Cheatum and Ralph Wilson, Assistant Managing Editors; Tom Turner, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor;
Sue Thieman, Society Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and
Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa ... Business Manager
F. Mike Harris, Advertising Manager;
Tom L. Brown, Circulation Manager;
Richard Horn, Classified Advertising Manager; William Goodwin, Promotion Manager; Martin Zimmerman,
National Advertising Manager.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
Sound and Fury
Art of Research
A new specter is abroad in the land. I refer generally to the spirit of anti-intellectualism that is gaining ground. Specifically, I refer to the new attacks on scholarly research. Several of these attacks have seen print in issues of the Daily Kansan. For example, Jacques Barzun, in an article which you reprinted, denigrates the entire area of academic research.
LET ME CITE A FEW CASES IN DEFENSE OF THIS FIELD where scholars have worked long hours on tasks that may not have made massive attacks on areas of ignorance but did chip away at the unknown.
At another university, for example a historian recently completed his two-year study of the four-day administration of Gov. Endicott Peabody Kelly, an 18th Century New England governor. This 459 page study not only dealt with Mr. Kelly's short but interesting gubernatorial career but speculated on the remaining 726 days of his term. I understand that the work was so seminal that the Kelly descendants have had the study privately printed.
AT THIS SAME UNIVERSITY I WAS PRIVILEGED TO AID in the collation of the Polyanna books, an invigorating study indeed. In another department, a medieval scholar compared the number of wimples worn on London's Barrett Street in 1489 with those he saw in 1939, 450 years later. He noticed style changes that indicated some subtle differences in female attire.
Here, I am privileged to work on the utilization of dithyrambs and dactyls by the western poet Shane O'Shanter whose work was done mainly on the walls of public structures. Since many of these structures were taken down with the advent of modern plumbing, the world might lose these works were it not for my research.—RLZ
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
THE VIRGINIAN, by Owen Wister. Popular Library. 50 cents.
Whether "The Virginian" is an accurate picture of the cowboy no longer seems important. Experts on the subject have shown in recent years that Andy Adams or Eugene Manlove Rhodes showed us the true American cowboy, that Wister did us a disservice by romanticizing the man of the plains.
But which is the real cowboy to most Americans? Legend and myth in time attain a certain measure of truth themselves. And "The Virginian" to many readers is the truth.
Owen Wister has acquired status that cannot be accorded Zane Grey or Clarence Mulford. He was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry James, and a recent writer in the American Quarterly even shows Wister as a writer of Jamesian potential, who missed with "The Virginian" because of his inability to develop character or central consciousness or any of the other things that critics like to attribute to James.
What Wister did with "The Virginian" was to help to give us a prototype. The Virginian is the very symbol of the cowboy—tall, quiet, a bit on the humorous side, of rockbound character, a veritable Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea, and it seems only right that Cooper and McCrea should have portrayed The Virginian in talking versions of the novel.
"The Virginian" gave us a stock picture of the heroine as well, and the weak villain, such a contrast to the strong hero. It gave us the Wyoming plains, and a saying, "When you say that, smile!" It gave us a landmark hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. And who cares that The Virginian was a larger-than-life hero? That's the way we want the cowboy, apparently, and that's the way we're likely to keep him.