Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / April 23, 1964, edition 1 / Page 2
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'I* Ttiey e*T<?ewi$T EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man And He May Be Wrong The Unbridled Press In a supine exhibition aimed at protecting the inflammatory northern press the United States supreme court recently ruled that any media could libel any public official in its news, editorial or -advertising so long as the libel was “not done in malice.” Nothing this court does ought to surprise anyone, but this is a new and dangerously low gutter to which it has escorted the "objective” news media of our nation. We were asked by an extremely short sighted friend how we could be so critical of a court that had held so strongly in favor of all news media in this particular case. Of course, to understand one has to realize that the court was seeking ways and means of throwing out a huge damage to an Al abama official against the New York Times. Obviously the ruling would have been in the exact opposite direction if it had been an Alabama newspaper' and a New York official. But for whatever the reason might have ' — been, the danger in this ruling is that it gives the fanatic fringes of the news trade license to slur and slander to its venal heart’s content. This is legal application of the old axiom r Give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves. * No freedom we enjoy in this country is an absolute; they are all qualified to the extent that they infringe upon the rights of others. Justice Holmes in a saner court reminded, “Freedom of speech doesn’t give one the right to holler, ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” i This court has said that absence of "mal ice” removes the odor of libel from any statement about a public official. In truth, in logic and in law there can only be one defense against libel; and that is .that the allegedly libelous statement be the truth. This court wants other American tradi tions to sink along with it, so it has invited news media onto the sinking ship of prin ciples. ' ’ Statistics flood the land on the frighten ing difficulty students have-getting into col lege, and undoubtedly it i$ a, bit more dif ficult now than 30 years ago, when money was less plentiful for scholarly pursuits and the employment standards of the nation were much lower. .'%■:*/ But up until now we have-to meet the first serious student who has been . unable to get into a college. Perhaps,' not THE college of first or even second choice, but the student who is determined to further his education obviously does find some place to quench his intellectual thirst. This does not mean • that we are not in need of more colleges and universities. It only means that there is no need for crash programs of wasteful extravagance in this realm. ■ , Cv/VCr ’ around college campuses, s and architects all en dollar building needs, but support such a sudden **k; "'V'V‘ jh ’ " ation is to The hi building vision mu the facts will expansion. The first lower the the er i The simplest way to do this is to bring the college to the student so that the ter ribly costly appendages of boarding school education can be eliminated. By bringing the college, to the student we will over a period of a few years need great ly improved universities where the cotn munity college graduate may move on to pursue his specialities, but this improvement is more basically administrative than archi tectual in nature. The community college offers a much less expensive “weeditog-out" ground, where the lazy, indifferent, inept student can be elim inated at less eost to parents and to tax payers. . ,i. . ,< ■ ; Please, let use not enlist the federal gov ernment in ra; “trash” program for higher education. As this is wiitten tVUj .-'these Forsyth and ank near or on the top in North Each has a rapidly expanding ec onomy and great wealth. 'i it may be coincidence that the president of the North Carolina fand is a Charlottean, another high official is a Salemite and still a prominent third is a Duke disciple. All of us should do what we can to brighten the corner where we are. i To us'it would seem that the best place to attack poverty is where it exists in its worst and most concentrated form. True, in any metropolitan area there are the slum-type poor, who are drawn like iron filings to the magnet of big city wealth, but the basic poverty of North Carolina is not of this variety, but is one that has been generated by the amazing revolution in ag riculture. Teaching mountaineers to weave baskets and city dwellers to more effectively milk the welfare cow will not reach the root of the North Carolina problem. North Carolin in general and East Caro lina in particular are basically agricultural and it will remain so for several genera tions yet to come. Our' wealth is in the soil and not in the asphalt jungles of Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Durham. We Still Wonder We find it impossible to dismiss from our mind Earl Warren’s statement that for reasons of national security the whole story of President Kennedy’s murder might not be told in this generation. Even after discounting the natural flam boyance and imprudence of this man’s char acter, and after ■ weighing his words over and over again we cannot avoid even the wildest kind Of speculation upon his state ment. Now, a hundred years after Lincoln’s murder we are finding that his own cabinet was involved in his murder. Evidence that in earlier times there were people in War ren’s position who decided what to let the public know and what NOT to let the pub lic know. This statement by Warren slanders in ferentially everyone in this nation from President Johnson down. It raises the supposition that Johnson or some of his colleagues might have decided that Johnson’s chance of being president was none at the ballot box, but 100 per cent sniper’s bullet. , es the appalling supposition that the American public lacks the courage and wis dom to assimulate even the hardest truths. It raises the supposition that Kennedy’s murder may have been a Russian plot, or a Cuban plot, or an inverted rightist tplot,^; Warren’s ill-advised, even if true, state ment raises every possible kind of specula tion except the most likely.. That President Kennedy was murdered by an egomaniac, who had neither rhyme nor reason, nor aid, nor plot, nor plan, nor motive. Now, after Warren’s statement, even if later the whole truth is told we will all have a perfectly reasonable right to still ask, “Did they really tell the whole story?" JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER. Publisher Published Every Thursday by The Lenoir Inc.; 403 West C., Plione JA 3 tter May North 3, 1879. Couni Verm 2375, trating political battle that has gone on for the past decade in the name 61 the negro, and for his vote, I have frequently found myself pondering this simple admonition. “To thine ownself be true." I have to measure my own sincerity, for no one else possibly can, and for all of my thinking years I have hated repression and people who could exercise repression over either the bodies or minds of others. Then, am t true to, this concept when I oppose racial integration ? Perhaps, 1 have qualified my position at least in my own mind and to my own satisfaction, however the process came about it is strongly and sincerely held. I have never viewed the negro as an in ferior person, but I have always respected him as a different person. I sincerely be lieve that for his own good, as well as what I believe to be the good of the white men it is best for the races to remain separate and different, rather than together and “equal.” Of course, there is no equality of individ uals. No two identical twins afe equal. There is equality before the law, but there never has been and never will be anything such as equality in employment, equality in educa tion. Politicians are using the negro as a con venient scapegoat for- their own greed and lust for power. They have convinced the negro that any and all hungers he may have are the result of white prejudice against him. They have not tried to tell the negro that “Operation Bootstrap" is a far better way1 to lift ones self than "Operation Sit In,” Jews were treated far worse in this coun try than negroes ever have been — even under slavery. But Jews did not seek laws to raise themselves. When they were denied, access to Miami Beach hotels they solved the problem in the oldest possible fashion. They bought the hotels. I hold that the negro has reached his greatest levels of accomplishment in the South not despite, but because* of segregated societies. The constant stimuli of compe tition has caused the best elements of South ern negro society to shine like a beacon throughout the entire , world. But even into and today those society are beinj they do not hi Neither of these institutions reached its position of wealth by whining for a bone from the white politician's table. But today every whte politician who aspires to elec tion in Durham Counter beats a path to their door, and not on any condescending: basis, either, but on the basis of hard-headed busi nessmen sitting down to go over the good reasons why or why not any particular can didate or issue should be supported or fought. American negroes have a far greater po tential economic bloc- ^>f pbwer than the • Jews simply because they outnumber Am erican Jews <ibout four-to-one. This/'is the , language that is understood universally. No where in the world is there a more respected negro minority than in Durham, North Carolina and this respect stems directly from the fact that the world’s largest negro insurance company and one of the world’s largest negro banks are in Difrham.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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April 23, 1964, edition 1
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