The Press: News Value of Murder

Every once in a while a murder is committed that unites in one "news story" all the sleeping romantic fancies of human nature. Such a murder is the Dorothy King case. It has love (and illicit love—which is always more fascinating), riches, social prestige, an underworld motif, intrigue and violence. It appeals to snobbery, outraged morality, pity, terror and man's appetite for the human hunt. Thousands of plain people, reading the lurid three-page account in the Hearst press, can imagine themselves either the beautiful Broadway butterfly, Dorothy King; the rich and socially prominent "angel" and man of mystery, John Mitchell; the dark and debonnaire South American cave man, Guimares; the tragic mother, Mrs. Keenan; the crafty sleuths hot on the scent of the blackmailing murderer; the poor, humiliated wife in Palm Beach; or even the colored maid, Billie Bradford, discreet and loyal confidant of the white beauty and her "important" lover.

A brilliant yellow journal like the New York American will play the story for all it is worth from every angle. Editorially committed to the adulation of the common man (the "Mr. Dubb" of its cartoons), it commercializes the fact that the vice of riches lay at the bottom of the tragedy. It breaks through the tacit and decent understanding between " respectable" papers whereby Mr, Mitchell's family was shielded and exposes him with picture and headlines, thus: " Here is 'Marshall' unmasked. The respected John Kearsley Mitchell of Philadelphia, New York and Boston clubdom, a member by marriage of the famous Stotesbury family of high society, and a millionaire. He is the ' Jack' of the fervent love letters," etc.

The Socialist Call, on the other hand, uses the scandal as revolutionary propaganda. Speaking of the District Attorney's attempt to keep " Marshall's" identity a secret, it says: " This servility and crawling before a millionaire justifies the hot anger of workingmen, who always find the ' majesty of the law' flaunted in their faces."

So long as human nature is made up of emotions that cannot be satisfied in real life, love, ghosts and blood will continue to crowd religion and politics off the front page.

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