The newspaper reader, for one or another reason, regards crime as
important news because he is full of morbid curiosity regarding
whatever is abnormal in human conduct. A crime is something strange and
fascinating because passions play through it, and secret places in human
life are uncovered by it. It interests us because we are human, with
strange forces of evil coming up now and again into consciousness and
suggesting our brotherhood to the thief and the murderer. Many a man
reads in a story of defalcation, things he has himself done without being
found out. Many a woman reads in the story of a murder, passages from
her own life where she also _might_ have taken the fatal step beyond the
line of safety. Try as much as we may, we cannot divest ourselves of the
curiosity and the unconscious sympathy which make us look over the crime
record with more interest than we give to any other part of a newspaper.
The newspapers are reproached for publishing all about crimes; but the
average reader, perhaps we might say the best reader, peruses even the
details with absorbing interest. He may be ashamed of himself for his
curiosity, but he has the curiosity. The fact is not complimentary to us,
and we lash the press when we know we ought to lash ourselves. For the
reason just given, the remedy for the daily feast of passion and blood
is not an easy one to find. A newspaper needs great merits to be able
to omit the crime record; and though it should be accepted without that
record, many a subscriber of it would look for the record elsewhere. The
remedy is difficult because the public has to cure itself—the newspaper
can not cure it—of the desire to know “the evil that is in the world
through lust.” The world, the flesh and the devil take up a commanding
position in our anxieties, solicitudes, curiosities, and sympathies. We
must be a great deal better as a people before we shall be content to
live in ignorance of any badness which breaks through the calm surface
of life and rises into a billow of crime. It is true that the curiosity
may be educated out of us—not entirely, but in large degree—and yet it
is also true that we do not display any serious desire to be so educated.
We want this kind of news. We want to know at least the motives of the
crimes, how they were committed and whether they were punished or not.
The newspaper may give us these outline facts discreetly and briefly, but
the mass of us will secretly hunger for more. The moral of the business
may be left to the pulpit; it is tolerably plain to the pews.