Lord Rosebery once annoyed the Press by declaring that his ideal
newspaper was one which should give its news without comment. Doubtless
he was thinking of the commonweal. Yet a plea for no comments might be
made, with equal force, in behalf of the commentators themselves.
Occupations that are injurious to the persons engaged in them ought not
to be encouraged. The writing of 'leaders' and 'notes' is one of these
occupations. The practice of it, more than of any other, depends on,
and fosters hypocrisy, worst of vices. In a sense, every kind of
writing is hypocritical. It has to be done with an air of gusto, though
no one ever yet enjoyed the act of writing. Even a man with a specific
gift for writing, with much to express, with perfect freedom in choice
of subject and manner of expression, with indefinite leisure, does not
write with real gusto. But in him the pretence is justified: he has
enjoyed thinking out his subject, he will delight in his work when it
is done. Very different is the pretence of one who writes at top-speed,
on a set subject, what he thinks the editor thinks the proprietor
thinks the public thinks nice. If he happen to have a talent for
writing, his work will be but the more painful, and his hypocrisy the
greater. The chances are, though, that the talent has already been
sucked out of him by Journalism, that vampire. To her, too, he will
have forfeited any fervour he may have had, any learning, any gaiety.
How can he, the jaded interpreter, hold any opinion, feel any
enthusiasm?--without leisure, keep his mind in cultivation?--be
sprightly to order, at unearthly hours in a whir-r-ring office? To
order! Yes, sprightliness is compulsory there; so are weightiness, and
fervour, and erudition. He must seem to abound in these advantages, or
another man will take his place. He must disguise himself at all costs.
But disguises are not easy to make; they require time and care, which
he cannot afford. So he must snatch up ready-made disguises--unhook
them, rather. He must know all the cant-phrases, the cant-references.
There are very, very many of them, and belike it is hard to keep them
all at one's finger-tips. But, at least, there is no difficulty in
collecting them. Plod through the 'leaders' and 'notes' in half-a-dozen
of the daily papers, and you will bag whole coveys of them.
Most of the morning papers still devote much space to the old-fashioned
kind of 'leader,' in which the pretence is of weightiness, rather than
of fervour, sprightliness, or erudition. The effect of weightiness is
obtained simply by a stupendous disproportion of language to sense. The
longest and most emphatic words are used for the simplest and most
trivial statements, and they are always so elaborately qualified as to
leave the reader with a vague impression that a very difficult matter,
which he himself cannot make head or tail of, has been dealt with in a
very judicial and exemplary manner.