World Film and Television Progress (1938)

brinks ... Reporters have made rawmaterial for some of Hollywood's most exciting and entertaining films. Do American newspapermen resemble their screen likenesses? Part answer to this comes from CLINT CREWS, who gives a breath-taking account of his experiences as a police reporter. This article was written for America's smartest and most sophisticated monthly 'Esquire,' from which, as a gesture towards better Anglo-American understanding, we have had kind permission to reprint. friends. And any other friends who may loom on the horizon of plain, crooked politics. If the police happen to be a little ornery about fixing the tags (there is often a cry about tag fixing from some irate citizen who was stuck with a goodly fine), the reporter will take the tags to the police judge, who will turn them over to his clerk, who will place opposite the names on the book the notation, "dismissed" or "sentence suspended". It is all done in about five minutes. Sometimes the police reporter gets ten or fifteen tags in the course of the day, ranging from parking overtime to reckless driving, even to driving while intoxicated. He is expected to fix all of these. . . . Police judges have to run for office and a police reporter on the side of a police judge prior to election is a valuable asset. There are so many chances the police reporter has to bring the judge's name before the public, day after day, until John Citizen, seeing the name so often, thinks of nothing but putting his X after it on the ballot. . . . Driving up the peninsula to San Francisco from Fresno a year or so ago at 4 a.m. I was arrested in one of the many small towns which follow one after the other on the way. I was arrested for doing 65 miles an hour in a 25mile zone. After I had shown my operator's licence carrying my name and address, business address, namely the name of the paper with which I was employed in Fresno, he asked me what I did on the paper. I told him I was a police reporter, "Well", he ^aid, "it's too late now as I have the tag made out and these carbons have to go to Sacramento, but if you are a police ■ reporter you will know what to do about it." I did know what to do about it and I did it. I never heard any more from the tag, although I read in a Bay Area newspaper where the judge in that town gave a citizen five days in jailfor doing 66 miles an hour at the same intersection at 3 a.m., a day after I was tagged. Perhaps the extra mile and the different hour brought about his sentence. Many business men wonder sometimes why their offices were raided by the police or the district attorney's office. The police reporter knows. They were raided on the possibility, often probability, such raids would make news. It is true that in the name of justice the offices as a general rule should be raided. However the police reporter is not concerned with justice, he is concerned with the one thing — news. News is all that concerns his editors also. It was the hope of news that made the reporter argue with the chief of police, or district attorney, or captain of detectives, whoever the official might be. the offices should be raided as a smart move on the official's part, a move which would bring justice to a head, a move which would make a hit with the public. Moreover it does make a hit with the public. You can tell it by the newspaper sales. Everyone is satisfied except the victim and no one has much sympathy for him anyhow. Many times the reporter is acting on direct instructions from his office. No newspaper editor expects the public to keep on buying papers carrying the same news. There must be something new every edition. The raid (Midnight Court, Warner's) gives a new angle to the story. For the next edition — well, human ingenuity is always able to dig up something. . . . Some of the things for which the police reporter, acting on his own initiative or on direct instructions from his office, is responsible, unquestionably reflect to the good of the community. But the good of the community be hanged if it happens to stand in the way of realising the supreme ambition of the press — news. How many times has the daily press published crime stories which placed the police under a handicap and allowed the criminal to escape? Pick up your daily paper and scan the crime stories. Somewhere among them you will find a story portraying police plans with such detail the hunted man would have to be blind as well as dumb not to effect his getaway. Some smart police reporter talked some enthusiastic officer out of the story, the officer being enthusiastic mainly about getting his name in the paper. He gets it, the reporter gets the story, the criminal escapes everyone is happy except the public, and the public does not seem to care much so long as it can read an interesting story in the paper. The public would care, however, if it knew that increased fines could be laid at the door of the reporter. It does not know. It just accepts it as bad nature on the part of the police judge and lets it go at that perhaps with the fleeting thought it will vote for someone else at the next election. (Continued on next page) 69