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("Bing") Bingay, editorial director of the Detroit Free Press. Editor Bingay, bald and fat, carefully segregated the majority of U. S. newspapers as law-abiding institutions. But the yellows and the "equally sinister group that is in the twilight zone, the near yellows, which parade under a cloak of respectability," said he, "created the fiction of the gangster and then through that fiction made him into a reality." Excerpts from his speech: ". . . [Yellow] newspapers create for headline purposes catchy, attention-arresting names for the bands of marauders. In my home city ... it is the 'Purple Gang.' . . Most of you police officers and even the criminals themselves do not know the gang names until they are hammered into your brain day after day by the headlines of the 'penny dreadfuls.' ... A bunch of sneak thieves and neighborhood bums are ballyhooed into a ferocious gang. . . . The reporters and editors of the yellow papers act as pressagents for these criminals. . . . The people, having been terrorized by the pressagents, are easier prey for them. [Moreover] every police chief knows that a hunted criminal watches the sensational newspapers to keep him posted on the developments of the search for him. . . ." Why should yellow newspapers be able to get and print such news? Editor Bingay was sympathetic. "A courageous police chief, a fearless prosecutor, or a high-minded judge who . . . fights against such outrageous newspaper conduct finds himself the storm centre of a lot of trumped-up charges. 'Oh,' says the yellow editor, 'you won't give us a break, hey? All right, we'll get you and get you good!' . . ." How put a stop to gangster pressagentry? Editor Bingay proposed an ambitious scheme: "The only way to get at the publisher of a yellow newspaper is to hit him in the pocketbook." Let the police chiefs appoint a committee to meet with other committees of editors, publishers, advertisers, andto make sure of their grounda committee of the American Bar Association. Let them draft a code of newspaper conduct in dealing with crime. Then "the yellow press . . . will be revealed for what it is, just as the American Medical Association exposes a quack doctor and the American Bar Association reveals the shyster." "Bing" Bingay, probably the best known newsman in Detroit, knows intimately the ways of the police and of the sensational press. He grew up with many a bluecoat in Corktown, Detroit's Irish settlement, where he was raised (although he is Canadian-born, of Scotch descent). He knows sensational newspapers because for 30 years they have been his opposition (in the form of Hearst's Times, Macfadden's defunct Daily). At 17 "Bing" Bingay started as an office boy on the Scripps-founded Detroit News. He left as managing editor four years ago, held a $15,000-a-year advertising job for a year, then joined the old, respected Free Press (whose first editorial campaign in 1831 was for Michigan's admittance to the Union). His first assignment was to compile and edit its voluminous Centenary Edition in 1931. Also he writes a daily colyum on the editorial page, called "Good Morning," which does not do justice to his ability as a newsman. (Example from a colyum last week: "A feller out in Oklahoma
