He, however, who is bold enough to essay
this form of journalism must never forget that a judge who professes to
be judicial in tone, but who ends in being partial, is a worse man than
an honest advocate, because he is, in fact, cloaking partisanship by
hypocrisy.
Little need be said in defence of the advocate journalist. He makes no
pretence to be doing anything but pleading the cause of his party, and
placing it in the best possible light. It is not his business, but that
of the opposition writer, to put the case for the other side, and if he
occasionally pretends to an enthusiasm which does not really belong to
him, he is only practising the innocent artifice of the counsel who
tells the jury that he will be an unhappy man should he have failed in
the task of persuading them to restore his long-suffering, if
burglarious, bibulous, or bigamous, client to his best wife and family.
It must not be supposed, however, that the advocate journalist is a
cynic who realises that his own cause is a poor one, but calls it the
best of causes because he is paid so to do. That, as all men of
experience know, is a fallacy as regards the barrister, and it is still
more a fallacy as regards the journalist.
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