The instant that a sensational homicide occurs, the aim of the
editors of these papers is--not to see that a swift and sure
retribution is visited upon the guilty, or that a prompt and
unqualified vindication is accorded to the innocent, but, on
the contrary, so to handle the matter that as many highly
colored "stories" as possible can be run about it.
Thus, where the case is perfectly clear against the prisoner,
the "yellow" press seeks to bolster up the defence and really
to justify the killing by a thinly disguised appeal to the
readers' passions. Not infrequently, while the editorial page
is mourning the prevalence of homicide, the front columns are
bristling with sensational accounts of the home-coming of the
injured husband, the heartbreaking confession of the weak and
erring wife, and the sneering nonchalance of the seducer,
until a public sentiment is created which, if it outwardly
deprecates the invocation of the unwritten law, secretly avows
that it would have done the same thing in the prisoner's
place.
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