The Press: Unethical Practices?

In a Cleveland courtroom last week, Cleveland Press Reporter Leonard Hammer meekly answered a charge of contempt of court. Beside him stood Press Editor Louis Seltzer and two other staffers. They had faked a divorce (TIME, Feb. 14) to dramatize the slipshod handling of such cases in Cuyahoga County. Though Editor Seltzer argued that “What we did with good intent . . . could be done by others with bad intent,” the four Pressmen were found guilty, fined a total of $1,000. Sympathetic readers offered Editor Seltzer more than $1,400, and sent him six bouquets; he kept the flowers but declined the money. (The Press paid all the fines.)

Competing newspapers were not so sympathetic. The Cleveland News, which had played down the story of easy divorces, played up the convictions; the Plain Dealer spanked the Press in an editorial on the obligation of the press to “avoid unethical practices.” Unrepentant, the Press demanded the reform of the “sloppy, inequitable and disgraceful” divorce-court procedure.