The sources of Negro news are the same as sources of other news. Some comes from the staff; some from the City News Bureau. Some of the local news concerning Negroes comes from reporters. No news of any consequence is received by telephone or correspondence. The Associated Press treats it on the same basis as other news. To insure accuracy the usual methods of inquiry are employed. However, most of this news comes from responsible news bureaus. Articles are re-written but only for condensation. During the threatened race riot the aid of leading Negro newspapers was sought to check information on serious matters. Each item is judged on its merits.
4. THE NEGRO PRESS
Among the considerations which have been urged by Negroes as making necessary the establishment of the Negro press are:
1. The indifference of white newspapers to the Negro group, their emphasis on the unfortunately spectacular, and the consequent loss of items of interest among Negroes throughout the country.
2. The importance of developing the morale of the Negro group, creating a solidarity of interest and purpose for measures of defense, correcting the impressions created by general opinion, and centering the attention of Negroes upon themselves and their destiny. There has never been sufficient capital for the adequate development of the Negro press. The purpose, however, has been served of collecting items of interest from all sections of the country, although they lack the facilities of so efficient an agency as the Associated Press.
For a time practically all of the northern Negro newspapers fell under the condemnation of the United States Attorney-General's office.[91] They were accused of radicalism and incitation to violence. Frequent criticisms of the Negro press declare it dangerous to the interests of cordial race relations. Ex-President Taft in the Philadelphia Ledger said: "The editors of the colored press should be reasoned with to cease publishing articles, however true, having inciting effect."
Commenting on criticisms of this kind, Isaac Fisher, editor of the Fisk University News, said:
Since the Washington and Chicago riots, the colored newspapers have been bitterly arraigned in some quarters for being responsible for race hatred. But the singular part of the indictment is that these papers are not accused of "falsifying" the record, but of stating the grounds of the Negro's resentment; and there is growing up a school of thought which argues that the colored papers should refrain from publishing as news any facts, even though true, which serve to increase the bitterness of the colored people against the white people. The comments made by those who charge the Negro press with being the cause of race antagonism are unanimous in interpreting as "incendiary" all statements of facts whose bare recital makes the Negro discontented with present conditions.
It should also be noted that the charge of inciting to race hatred is laid against the Negro press specifically for the period which has followed the end of the late war; whereas the charge of inciting white people to wrath against the Negro is an old one which has been repeated again and again during the past thirty years.
But, while the Negro press is not as old as the white press and cannot possibly be charged with having "been on the job" quite so long, it is true, nevertheless, that some of its members have cast all prudence to the winds since the signing of the armistice, and have entered a mad race with the most "yellow" of yellow white journals in vitriolic race attacks, in this case upon all white people, in the attempt to meet the "yellow" white press more than half way.