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THE SCANDAL
The Chicago Tribune is the most recent entry into the group of metropolitan newspapers, headed by the Sunpapers, who apparently have developed a satanic appetite for the complete moral and economic annihlation of the Eastern Shore.
The Tribune articles, published in daily installments have been spread gleefully across the front pages of the Sunpapers, bearing such cheerful headings as "Finds Mob Spirit Rules Eastern Shore" and other similarly ridiculously false allegations.
The combined circulations of the Sunpapers, the Chicago Tribune and other journals who have carried similar stories, have, quite frankly, given the Eastern Shore more ADVERSE publicity than can be overcome with a million dollar's worth of FAVORABLE publicity.
The derogatory slanders they have published have served to quite definitely lower Eastern Shoremen in the minds and esteems of countless thousands of Americans uninformed as to true conditions here. Eastern Shore real estate is worth materially LESS in the world's markets today because The Sunpapers, the Tribune and other journals of their ilk have, with reckless, irresponsible abandon emblazoned to the world a false conception of Eastern Shore ideas, ideals and standards of living.
If any people ever have been cruelly, grossly and unnecessarily slandered since the unfortunate and generally condemned lynching of a few weeks ago it has been the people of the Eastern Shore. For though the rank and file of true Eastern Shoremen are just as vehement in their denunciation of mob spirit as the citizens of any other part of America, the Sunpapers, the Tribune and other publications are assidiously and falsely setting up a standard by which to measure ALL Kpeople of the peninsula. here is not a tract of real estate, not a ness nor an industry on the entire East-
SHEET "MOBS"
ern Shore that has not been very definitely damaged, in one way or another, by the false and baseless stories carried by these newspapers.
They have unhesitatingly assailed our Courts and referred to them in terms of derision or condemnation; they have attacked the integrity and honesty of our entire citizenship; they have reflected upon the intelligence of our public officials and vigorously defamed our schools, our churches and public institutions as foul breeding places of crime or revolution.
Because of the incalcuable damage that already has been wrought; because of the specific, definite very vital damage that already has been done to Eastern Shoremen, their properties and their institutions, these irresponsible newspapers who persist in a relentless persecution of the Eastern Shore country should be called to account and compelled to prove or admit the falsity of their innumerable unjust accusations.
As a mere country weekly, scarcely a dot in the broad expanse of American newspaper-dom, The Centreville Observer never hac occasion to learn whether or not a newspaper may foully and falsely libel a community, its people and its business—and get away with it without fear or prosecution in the civi courts. But it DOES seem that the people of the Eastern Shore should have SOME redress to halt this relentless, infuriated persecution by newspapers who seek sensationalism rather than the truth; who are more interested in defamation than veracity and who have disregarded every moral code o1 newspaper ethics by "mobbing" the character of defenseless and innocent citizens.
For even the virtuous Sunpapers and the bumptuous Tribune apparently fail to s^e that there is no material difference between mob spirit which takes a LIFE and mob spirit which assails and destroys the integrity and character of a community.
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