The Herald-Examiner published ninety-seven unfavorable and thirty favorable articles. Of this number, thirty-one unfavorable and six favorable appeared on the front page.
The Chicago Daily News devoted thirty-three articles to unfavorable publicity and fifty-one to publicity of a favorable sort. Of these, eighteen unfavorable and eighteen favorable appeared on the first page.
Bombing publicity.—The bombing of the homes of Negroes is an expression of lawlessness which in an orderly community should not be tolerated. The primary function of the newspaper is to report the facts. Upon this basis the public may then pass its judgment. In the case of a bombing it might be supposed that an orderly community would wish to know the persons involved, the damage effected, the motive, the action of the police and the result of efforts to capture the perpetrators of the act. Ordinarily this is done in most cases of lawlessness and in bombings not involving racial issues.
Of the forty-five racial bombings which took place in Chicago between July 1, 1917, and June 18, 1920, fourteen were not mentioned in any of the six large dailies of the city.[88] Of the remaining thirty-one, seven were reported in one paper, ten in two papers, nine in three papers, while five appeared in four papers. Not one of the forty-five cases appeared in more than four papers. Although there might have been a total of 270 news reports of these bombings only seventy-four actually appeared. Of the forty-five bombings the Tribune and Herald-Examiner each reported twenty, the Post fourteen, the News eleven, the Journal eight, and the American one. In all cases the reports openly recognized that these bombings were not the result of individual grievances but involved organized effort and activity on the part of groups or communities in the practice of throwing racial bombs. It was generally referred to as a "race bomb" or "race war bombs." Typical headings were:
Journal, April 7, 1919:
Race Hatred Bomb Hurls Six Families from Bed
Journal, November 19, 1918:
Bomb Home of Aged Negro. Explosion Seen as Protest by Whites
Journal, March 6, 1920:
Attribute Bomb to South Side Race War