The Press: Code v. Law

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Writer Emmett Watson of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (circ. 196.955) had trouble built into his weekly column. While it read like a gossip column, it was actually an advertisement paid for by ten Seattle restaurants whose names Watson dropped among the items. Possibly because the column rested on that highly dubious journalistic base, Watson at times stretched a grin into a guffaw. "Three noted ex-cons are busy about town putting together a burglar-alarm system," he wrote one day in 1956. "The guy who installs it is an expert—served in three state prisons for a total of twelve years—for burglary."

Seattle's newly formed A & M Burglary Alarm Signaling Device Co. found nothing in the item to chuckle about. Although not named outright, A & M, the only such three-man firm in the city, declared that it was easily identifiable. A & M admitted that one of the trio had two felony convictions (not for burglary), but the other two had clean records. The firm's members filed a $175,000 libel suit.

Last week as the case neared trial, crew-cut Emmett Watson. 40, made himself look even worse. He admitted that he "dressed up" a story he heard about how "an ex-con up for burglary was now installing burglar-alarm systems"; he could not explain why he wrote about three ex-cons instead of one. Ordered in superior court to identify the item's source, Watson would say only that he got it from "a prominent, respected law officer." He claimed no constitutional right, but refused to give the source's name because to betray a source would amount to "professional suicide."

All this was too much for Judge Malcolm E. Douglas. He found Watson in contempt of court, and imposed an unusual penalty: he held Watson in default in the libel suit—which, in effect, ruled him guilty of libel and barred him from participating in the trial or the determination of damages. Judge Douglas said he would determine the damages to be assessed against Watson following a jury trial of the case against the Post-Intelligencer's publishers (Hearst) and three restaurants.

Summing up, Judge Douglas put the issue in a way that made many a newspaperman cringe. Said he: "We have here a case which is a clash between the code of the newspaper fraternity and the law of the land as I conceive it to be." Most members of the fraternity could not help feeling that the code, at least in this case, was spattered by some embarrassing stains.