(4) The author, whether of books or essays or reviews, has to face particularly powerful temptations. It is so easy to overstate his case, to omit facts that make against his conclusions, to use colored words, to beg the question adroitly, to create prejudice by unfair epithets, to evade difficult questions, to take the popular side of a debated matter at the cost of loyalty to truth. Controversy almost inevitably breeds inaccuracy; there are few writers who fight fair. Quotations, torn from their context, mislead; carefully chosen figures give a wrong impression; the reviewer is tempted to pick out passages that support only his contention, whether eulogistic or depreciatory. Leslie Stephen speaks of "the ease with which a man endowed with a gift of popular rhetoric, and a facility for catching at the current phrases, can set up as teacher, however palpable to the initiated may be his ignorance." A larger proportion of the great mass of books yearly published are mere trash, appealing to untrained readers, and only confirming them in unwarranted beliefs and opinions. Few there are who are really fit to teach the public; and of those there are fewer still who love truth more than the triumph of their opinion, who are candid, scrupulous, and exact in their statements. There is doubtless little conscious deception; but there is a great deal of misstatement which is inexcusable, and due either to slovenliness, lack of proper training, or partisanship. This brings us to the similar and even graver evils in our modern newspapers, which we must pause to study in somewhat greater detail. For nowhere is untruthfulness so rampant and so shameless as in contemporary journalism. The ethics of journalism. (1) The gravest evil, perhaps, in journalistic practice is the suppression or distortion of news in the interest of political parties and "big business." It is impossible to rely on the political information given in most of our newspapers; they are dominated by a party, subservient to "the interests," afraid to publish anything that will offend them. They misrepresent facts, give prejudiced accounts of events, gloss over occurrences unfavorable to their ends, circulate unfounded rumors to create opinion, pounce upon every flaw in the records of opponents,- going often to the point of shameless libel,- while eulogizing indiscriminately the politicians of their own party. Many of them cannot be counted on to attack corruption or politically protected vice. They are organs neither of an impartial truth seeking nor of public service. However conscientious the reporters and editors might wish to be, they are bound, by the fear of dismissal, to follow the policy of the owners.