Give Light

I can't stop wondering how the Obama-Khalidi videotape situation would be handled if it were in the possession of a Scripps newspaper rather than the Los Angeles Times. Growing up in Denver I became accustomed to the phrase "Give light and the people will find their own way" printed in the masthead of the Rocky Mountain News. Naive youth that I was, I believed for many years that ALL newspapers adhered to this ideal. Silly me.

So today I sought out the LA Times motto. I couldn't easily find it on the paper's own website but here I found it quoted as, "Largest circulation in the west." Not quite as inspirational is it?

In this jaded era I found it refreshing to read the story of the Scripps motto:

Words are so often turned to such shabby or trivial ends that it's sometimes worth celebrating those with substance and a pedigree. Consider the Scripps motto: Give light and the people will find their own way.

Those words first appeared on a newspaper masthead June 22, 1922. They were placed there by a New Mexico editor who refused to damp down truth even when the mighty threatened to smash the lantern.

As the story goes, Carl Magee first attacked U.S. Sen. Albert B. Fall in his Albuquerque newspaper over the Fall machine's misuse of water rights to wrest the votes of New Mexico farmers. When Fall became interior secretary, he leaned on banks to call-in their loans to the paper.

(...)

"Scripps saw a man in New Mexico making a tough fight for the people of New Mexico, for principles in which the organization believed. They asked him orally about terms. He wrote a letter and Roy Howard scribbled 'OK.' Then they wired money to his paper. Sounds suspiciously like idealism."

(...)

Years later, Dante scholar H.D. Austin from the University of Southern California attributed the line to the following passage in Purgatory XXII67-69: "Facesti come quei che va di notte che porta il lume dietro e.a se non giova ma dopo se fa le persone dott." A literal translation of this would read: "Thou didst as one who passing through the night bears a light behind, that profits not himself but makes those who follow wise."

It is speculated that Carl Magee had read and liked the passage but might have forgotten its source, author and exact wording. Or, being an editor, he may have streamlined it for his editorial purposes.

In any event, the "give light" motto served Carl Magee's purposes and – more than 80 years later – continues to do so today for The E. W. Scripps Company.

So the natural question to the LA Times is, "What don't you want the people to see?"