The Independent

(From The Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot)

The Elizabeth City Independent is a weekly journal that takes inordinate pleasure in belaboring charlatans and taking the cover off things that people for many reasons, not all of them good, would prefer to keep from public knowledge.

It will, therefore, surprise nobody if the clearing up of Thursday night's shooting at Elizabeth City should show that young William Keith Saunders, editor of this paper, was fired at by some disgruntled individual in reprisal for something that his paper printed. That of course, is pure surmise and the shooting may have had another motivation altogether, but it seems at least a reasonable hypothesis.

If the hypothesis here noted is correct, the peppering of Mr. Saunders from ambush with an automatic shotgun was an act of editorial reprisal at its worst. Granted that individuals are sometimes ill-used and injured by newspaper articles or opinions, it remains true that where the injury is real and maliciously inflicted, ample redress is provided by law. Where the grievance cannot be satisfied under the libel law the individual feeling himself used can demand the publication of an apology or take his satisfaction vis-a-vis, without gloves. Unpleasant as these measures sometimes are, they are at least within the limits of fair fighting. Ambushing, shooting at an unarmed man without warning under the cover of darkness, is the tactic of the thug.

For the sake of Elizabeth City's reputation we hope the authorities will lay hold of Mr. Saunders' attacker and that the courts will send him to the penitentiary for a period of useful reflection on the elementary decencies of editorial reprisal.