The Lower Journalism

Today I got a call from a student editor for Vox Magazine, a publication of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She was calling on a cell phone to verify quotations from an interview a student reporter had conducted with me the week before. The subject was, of course, the James T. Scott lynching. The cell connection was so spotty that I could only hear about 4 words out of 5, which was making me a bit nervous, but I okayed a  half dozen sentences more or less on faith. Then the editor read this line.

Hunt says that although various incidents could have sparked the lynch mob, the most likely was due to tax incentives.

I said, "You'll have to read that one to me again. The phone connection is really rotten. It sounded like you had me saying that the lynching was "due to tax incentives"?
   She said, "Yes, that's right, I have, "tax incentives."
   "Does that make any sense at all to you?"
    "Well, no, not really."

Eventually the editor and I figured out what the source of the confusion was. I had read the student reporter the following two paragraphs, published on page one of the Columbia Daily Tribune the morning before the Scott lynching:

   It is generally believed that Scott is guilty of the crime and Miss Almstedt’s identification makes certain now that he was the man who attacked her.

   There has been much talk of mob activity and many men of sound judgment who do not believe in mob law are of the opinion that if it is positively proven that the negro is the man who committed the crime the taxpayers should be saved any costs that might accrue from a trial and that summary justice should be dealt to him.

There are more lessons to be learned here than I will take the space to list. Some make you want to laugh, some make you want to scream. I almost wish I had let the "tax incentives" quotation stand. It might have driven a few more people to read that front page story from 1923 and to consider the difference between merely inept journalism and competence turned into a deadly weapon.