THE PUBLIC MIND: FORMER EDITOR: USE OF `INNOCENT' NOT WITHOUT REASON

To the Editor:

My good friend Judge Bill Hopkins has explained very ably why the law does not allow a person to be found innocent in a court of law.

This is not to be disputed, nor is it here.

There is, however, good reason for newspapers to report that a person has been found innocent of charges, rather than the legal "not guilty". I learned this many years ago from the late, great editor of The Missourian, Juel Mosley.

One of the first things he told me when I started as a young reporter on this newspaper was to use "innocent" rather than "not guilty"in stories of crime.

Gremlins delight in typos. Linotype operators in those days inadvertently might drop the "not", thereby automatically making an innocent person "guilty" to that world of readers out there. Despite the safeguards of a careful copy desk and proof readers, the error could slip through, and on careless newspapers, it did.

This, it well can be imagined, could cause the newspaper considerable grief, the worst of which was a libel, the ultimate terror of all editors and publishers.

In today's use of computers, the possibility of the same thing happening might be less, but the writer doubts it. At least one safeguard, the proof reader, has been removed. The reporter sits in the seat of the Linotype operator and sometimes the copy editor, and he, too, forbid the thought, can make errors.

So, you see, while it may not meet legal standards, the use of "innocent" in crime stories is not without reason or justification, and I applaud those newspapers which continue to use it for their own and the innocent's protection, semantics aside.

John L. Blue

Cape Girardeau