The Wrangell Sentinel

THE PRESS
We all remember the bitter talk during the early days of the Lindbergh kidnaping, about alleged newspaper interference. Thousands of hysterical protest letters and telegrams poured in on the police of New York and New Jersey and nearly every newspaper editor received a ration of complaints that the press was helping the kidnappers.

A women's club in California sent a petition to hundreds of newspapers throughout the nation, demanding press silence on pain of reprisals in the form of a boycott of advertisers.

Even some prominent but faint-hearted editors agreed the press should withdraw from the case.

Colonel Lindbergh, however, was fair enough to the reporters, although that gentleman has strict and often impractical notions about press relations.

Well, in light of present events, with the kidnaper's notes all made public, and with the plot fairly well revealed, who will say that newspapers interfered with the action of the police, or the family?

The contrary is true.

The newspapermen co-operated with the police, suppressed matter which might have aided the kidnaper, and even published fake news at the behest of the police and Lindbergh family to throw the criminal off the pursuit trail.

On one occasion, Colonel Lindbergh thought he was being too closely followed by reporters and asked for greater freedom of action. He received it, promptly.

Now authorities working on the case are generously giving the credit to the newspapers for aiding in the generally supposed solution of the case and in unearthing details which point to conviction of the perpetrator of the crime. -Ketchikan Chronicle.