journalism. Mr. Walter Lippmann says in his sane little book, “Liberty
and the News”: “Resistance to the inertias of the profession, heresy
to the institution, and willingness to be fired rather than write what
you do not believe, these wait on nothing but personal courage.” That
is a little like saying that the harlot can stop harlotry by refusing
to ply her trade--which is indeed the attitude of some people in
comfortable circumstances. I doubt if Mr. Lippmann would have written
just as he did if he had ever had to depend for his dinner on pleasing
a managing editor, if he had not been from very early in his brilliant
career editor of a liberal endowed journal in which he is free to
express his beliefs. Most newspaper men are poor and not brilliant. The
correspondents whom Mr. Lippmann mentions as “eminences on a rather
flat plateau” are nearly all men who have succeeded in other work
than newspaper correspondence, and if not a newspaper in the world
would hire them, most of them could afford to thumb their noses at the
Ochses, Reids, and Harmsworths. Personal courage is surely a personal
matter, and it can seldom be effective in correcting the abuses of an
institution, especially when the institution can hire plenty of men of
adequate if not equal ability to take the place of the man of stubborn
integrity. I know one journalist who lost his position as managing
editor of two wealthy newspapers, one in Boston, the other in New York,
in the first instance because he refused to print a false and cowardly
retraction dictated by a stockholder whom the editor-in-chief desired
to serve, in the second instance because he refused to distort war
news. But what good did his single-handed rebellion do, except to make
a few friends proud of him? Did either newspaper lose even one mournful
subscriber? Did the advertising department suffer? Far from it. Another
man took his place, a man not necessarily less honest, but of more
conformable temperament. The muddy waters of journalism did not show a
ripple. Paradoxically, the journalist is the one man who can do little
or nothing to improve journalism. Mr. Lippmann’s suggestion that our
salvation lies “ultimately in the infusion of the news-structure by
men with a new training and outlook,” is, as he knows, the expression
of a vague hope, too remotely ultimate to have practical bearing on
the actual situation. The man of training and outlook, especially
of outlook, is the unhappiest man in the employ of a newspaper. His
salvation, if not ours, lies in getting out of newspaper work and
applying his ability and vision in some occupation which does not
discourage precisely the merits which an honest institution should
foster. This is not merely the opinion of a critical layman but
represents accurately if not literally the advice given to me by a
successful editor and writer of special articles. “In this game,” he
said, “you lose your soul.”
The stories of individuals who have tried to be decent in newspaper
work and have been fired might be valuable if they were collated and
if the better journalists would unite to lay the foundation in fact of
more such stories. But a profession, a trade, which has so little sense
of its own interest that it does not even make an effective union (to
be sure, the organization of newspaper writers met with some success,
especially in Boston, but to-day the organization has practically
disappeared) to keep its wages up can never be expected to unite in the
impersonal interests of truth and intellectual dignity. The individual
who charges against an enormous unshakable institution with the weapons
of his personal experience is too easily disposed of as a sore-head and
is likely to be laughed at even by his fellow-journalists who know that
in the main he is right.
This has happened to Mr. Upton Sinclair. I have studied “The Brass
Check” carefully for the selfish purpose of getting enough material
so that the writing of this chapter should be nothing but a lazy man’s
task of transcription, not to speak of the noble ethical purpose of
reforming the newspaper by exposing its iniquities. I confess I am
disappointed. “The Brass Check” is a mixture of autobiography, valuable
in its way to those who admire Mr. Sinclair, as I do most sincerely,
and of evidence which, though properly personal, ought to be handled
in an objective manner. I am puzzled that a man of “training and
outlook,” who has shown in at least one of his novels an excellent
sense of construction, could throw together such a hodge-podge of valid
testimony, utterly damning to his opponents, and naïve trivialities,
assertions insecurely founded and not important if they were well
founded. I am so sure that Mr. Sinclair is on the whole right that I am
reluctant to criticize him adversely, to lend a shadow of encouragement
to the real adversary, who is unscrupulous and securely entrenched.
But as a journalist of “training and outlook” I lament that another
journalist of vastly more ability, experience, and information should
not have done better work in selecting and constructing his material.
As a lawyer said to his client, “You are a saint and you are right,
but a court-room is no place for a saint and you are a damn bad
witness.” Mr. Sinclair’s evidence, however, is all there to be dug out
by whoever has the will and the patience. If one-tenth of it is valid
and nine-tenths of doubtful value, the one-tenth is sufficient to show
the sinister forces behind the newspapers and to explain some of the
reasons why the newspapers are untrustworthy, cowardly, and dishonest.
Though Mr. Sinclair tells some damaging stories about the sins of
anonymous reporters and of the prostitution of writers like the late
Elbert Hubbard, who had no excuse for being anything but honest and
independent, yet Mr. Sinclair on the whole would agree with me that the
chief responsibility for the evils of journalism does not rest upon
the journalist. He tries to place it squarely where it belongs on the
owners of the press and the owners of the owners. But it is difficult
to determine how the weight of guilt is distributed, for the press is a
monster with more than two legs.
Part of the responsibility rests upon the reader, if indeed the
reader is to blame for being a gullible fool and for buying shoddy
goods. Mr. Lippmann says: “There is everywhere an increasingly angry
disillusionment about the press, a growing sense of being baffled and
misled.” And Mr. Sinclair says: “The people want the news; the people
clamour for the news.” Both these statements may be true. But where
do the learned doctors find the symptoms? A few of us who have some
special interest in the press, in publicity, in political problems,
are disillusioned and resentful. Probably everybody has said or heard
somebody else say: “That’s only a newspaper story,” or “You cannot
believe everything you read.” But such mild scepticism shows no promise
of swelling to an angry demand on the part of that vague aggregate, the
People, for better, more honest newspapers, to such an angry demand as
you can actually hear in any house you enter for cheaper clothes and
lower taxes.
If we make a rough calculation of the number of papers sold and of
the number of people in the main economic classes, it is evident
that papers of large circulation must go by the million to the
working-people. Well, is there any sign of growing wrath in the breasts
of the honest toilers against the newspapers, against Mr. Hearst’s
papers, which throw them sops of hypocritical sympathy, not to speak of
papers which are openly unfair in handling labour news? Or consider the
more prosperous classes. In the smoking-car of any suburban train bound
for New York some morning after eight o’clock, look at the men about
you, business men, the kind that work, or do something, in offices.
They are reading the _Times_ and the _Tribune_. There may be some
growls about something in the day’s news, something that has happened
on the stock-market, or a stupid throw to third base in yesterday’s
game. But is there any murmur of discontent with the newspaper itself?
I fail to find any evidence of widespread disgust with the newspaper as
it is and a concomitant hunger for something better. The Reader, the
Public is mute, if not inglorious, and accepts uncritically what the
daily press provides. The reader has not much opportunity to choose
the better from the worse. If he gives up one paper he must take
another that is just as bad. He is between the devil and the deep sea,
as when he casts his ballot for Democrat or Republican. And if he
votes Socialist he gets the admirable New York _Call_, which is less
a newspaper than a vehicle of propaganda. When one paper is slightly
more honest and intelligent than its rivals, the difference is so
slight that only those especially interested in the problems of the
press are aware of it. For example, in discussing these problems with
newspaper men, with critical readers of the press, persons for any
reason intelligently interested in the problems, I have never found
one who did not have a good word to say for the New York _Globe_. It
is so appreciably more decent than the other New York papers that I
can almost forgive it for thrusting Dr. Frank Crane under my nose
when I am looking at the amusing pictures of Mr. Fontaine Fox--the
newspaper vaudeville has to supply stunts for all juvenile tastes.
Yet the _Globe_ does not find a clamorous multitude willing to reward
it for its superiority to its neighbours, which I grant is too slight
for duffers to discern. The American reader of newspapers, that is,
almost everybody, is a duffer, so far as the newspaper is concerned,
uncritical, docile, only meekly incredulous. It may be that “the
people” get as good newspapers as they wish and deserve, just as they
are said to get as good government as they wish and deserve. Certainly
if the readers of newspapers seem to demand nothing better, the
manufacturers of newspapers have no inducement to give them anything
better. But this does not get us any nearer a solution of the problem
or do more than indicate that some vaguely indeterminate part of the
responsibility for the evils of the newspapers must rest on the people
who buy them.
From the buyer to the seller is the shortest step. The newspaper is
a manufacturing concern producing goods to sell at a profit; it is
also a department store, and it has some characteristics that suggest
the variety show and the brothel. But the newspaper differs from all
other commodities in that it does not live by what it receives from
the consumer who buys it. Three cents multiplied a million times does
not support a newspaper. The valuable part of a newspaper from the
manufacturer’s point of view, and also to a great extent from the
reader’s point of view, is the advertisements. The columns of “reading
matter,” so called, are little more than bait to attract enough readers
to make the paper worth while as a vehicle for advertisements. It is
of no importance to the management whether a given column contain news
from Washington or Moscow, true or false, or a scandal or a funny
story, as long as it leads some thousands of human eyes to look at it
and so to look at adjacent columns in which are set forth the merits of
a safety razor or an automobile tire or a fifty-dollar suit of clothes
at thirty-nine dollars and a half. There has to be a good variety and a
certain balance of interest in the columns of reading matter to secure
the attention of all kinds of people. This accounts for two things, the
great development in the newspaper of pure, or impure, entertainment,
of more or less clever features, at the expense of space that might be
devoted to news, and also the tendency to accentuate narrative interest
above all other kinds of interest. A reporter is never sent out by his
chief to get information, but always, in the lingo of the office, to
get a “story.” This is sound psychology. Everybody likes a story, and
there are only a few souls in the world who yearn at breakfast for
information. To attack the newspaper for being sensational is to forget
that all the great stories of the world, from the amatory exploits
of Helen of Troy and Cleopatra to the scandalous adventures of Mrs.
Black, the banker’s wife, are sensational and should be so treated. The
newspaper manager is indifferent to every quality in his news columns
except their power to attract the reader and so secure circulation
and so please the advertiser. And the advertiser has as his primary
interest only that of bringing to the attention of a certain number of
people the virtues of his suspenders, shoes, and soothing syrup.
But the advertiser has a secondary interest. The newspaper willy-nilly
deals with ideas, such as they are. No idea inimical to the
advertiser’s business or in general to the business system of which
he is a dependent part must be allowed in the paper. Therefore all
newspapers are controlled by the advertising department, that is, the
counting-room. They are controlled negatively and positively. We are
discussing general characteristics and have not space for detailed
evidence. But one or two cases will suffice.
An example of the coercion of the newspaper by the advertiser was
recently afforded by the Philadelphia press. The Gimbel Brothers,
owners of a department store, were charged by United States Government
officials with profiteering. The only Philadelphia paper that made
anything of the story was the _Press_, which was owned by Mr. Wanamaker
of the rival department store. The other papers ignored the story or
put it in one edition and then withdrew it. If there is an elevator
accident in a general office building, it is reported. If there is a
similar accident in a department store, it is usually not reported.
When the New York _Times_ (April 25, 1921) prints a short account
of the experience of four Wellesley college students who disguised
their intellectual superiority and got jobs in department stores, the
head-line tells us that they “Find They Can Live on Earnings,” though
the matter under the head-line does not bear this out. Perhaps it does
no harm to suppress, or fail to publish, news of accidents and to make
out a good case for the living and working conditions of shop-girls.
These are minor matters in the news of the world and their importance
would appear only if they were accumulated in their tediously
voluminous mass.
The positive corruption of the newspaper by the advertiser goes deeper
and proceeds from larger economic powers than individual merchants.
There is all over the world a terrific economic contest between
the employing classes and the wage-earning classes. The dramatic
manifestation of this contest is the strike. Almost invariably the
news of a strike is, if not falsified, so shaped as to be unfavourable
to the workers. In the New York _Nation_ of January 5, 1921, Mr.
Charles G. Miller, formerly editor of the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_,
exposes the lies of the Pittsburgh papers during the steel strike.
In two weeks the Pittsburgh papers published more than thirty pages
of paid advertisements denouncing the leadership of the strike and
invoking “Americanism” against radicalism and syndicalism. The news
and editorial attitude of the papers coincided with the advertisements
and gave the impression that the strikers were disloyal, un-American,
bolshevik. They were silent on the real questions at issue, hours, pay,
working conditions. And not only the Pittsburgh press but the press of
the entire country was poisoned. For the Associated Press and other
news services are not independent organizations feeding news to their
clients but simply interrelated newspapers swapping each other’s lies.
The Denver newspapers control all the news that is read in Boston about
the Colorado coal mines. The Boston newspapers control all the news
that is read in San Francisco about the New England textile mills. The
head of a local bureau of the Associated Press is not a reporter; he is
merely a more or less skilful compiler and extracter who sends to the
nation, to the whole world, matter which is furnished him by the papers
of his district. So that he can usually hold up his hand and swear to
the honesty of his service; he is like an express agent who ships a
case of what he thinks is canned corn, and it is not his fault if there
is opium concealed in the case.
The power of the advertiser to make the newspaper servile and right
in its opinions is not confined to the local department store or the
special industry operating through a district press. Nor is it confined
to the negative punishment of withdrawing advertising of commodities
like hosiery, chewing gum, and banking service from papers that offend
their masters. There is another method of exerting this power, and that
is to buy advertising space in which to set forth ideas calculated
to influence public opinion. Here is a full page from a New York
paper containing a cartoon and text, the main idea of which is that
Labour and Capital should pull together. It is signed by “‘America
First’ Publicity Association” and is Bulletin No. 115 in a series--“be
sure to read them all.” This full-page bulletin, of which there have
already been more than a hundred, appeared in many newspapers--I do
not know how many; and a full page costs a good deal of money. What
is the object of this patriotic association? The prevailing theme of
the bulletins which I have seen is “Labour be good! Fight Bolshevism!
Beware the Agitator!” Who is going to be influenced by these bulletins?
Not the workingman. He knows what he wants, and if he is the dupe of
agitators and false theories, these sermons can never rescue him.
Not the capitalist. He knows what he wants, and gets it. Perhaps the
little middle-class fellow may swallow such buncombe on his daily
journey between his office and his home in the suburbs. But he is
already an intellectually depraved servant of the employing classes,
and it is not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete and
confirm his corruption. The primary object of the advertisement is to
keep the newspaper “good,” to encourage its editorial departments,
through the advertising department, not to fall below 99 and 44/100%
pure Americanism or admit ideas inimical to the general interests of
chambers of commerce, manufacturers’ associations, and other custodians
of the commonweal. I suspect that some clever advertising man has stung
the gentlemen who supply the money for this campaign of education, but
what is a few million to them? The man who can best afford to laugh is
the business manager of the newspaper when he looks at the check and
meditates on the easy money of some of his advertising clients and the
easy credulity of some of his reading clients.
It may be argued that the newspaper, which is a business, ought to
be controlled, directly and indirectly, by business interests; and
certainly if we allow the commercial powers to manage our food supply,
transportation, and housing, it is a relatively minor matter if the
same powers dominate our press. In like manner if we tolerate dishonest
governments, we are only dealing with an epiphenomenon when we consider
the dishonest and inefficient treatment by the press of public affairs,
national and international. All the news of politics, diplomacy, war,
world-trade emanates from government officials or from those who are
interested in turning to their own advantage the actions of officials.
Business is behind government, and government is behind business;
which comes first is unimportant like the problem of the chicken and
the egg. It is a partnership of swindle, and though the details of
the relation are infinitely complicated, the relation in itself is
easy to understand and accounts quite simply for the fact that world
news is the most viciously polluted of all the many kinds of news.
The efforts of a merchant to keep up the good name of his department
store, or of a group of manufacturers to break a strike are feeble and
even reasonable, so far as they use the newspapers, compared to the
audacious perversion of truth by the combination of arch criminals,
government and international business.
The star example in modern times is the current newspaper history of
Russia. The New York _Nation_ of March 6, 1920, published an article
showing that in the columns of the New York Times Lenin had died once,
been almost killed three times, and had fallen and fled innumerable
times. The _New Republic_ published August 4, 1920, a supplement by
Lippmann and Merz summarizing the news which the _Times_ printed about
Russia during the three years preceding March 1920. The analysis shows
an almost unbroken daily misrepresentation of the programme, purposes
and strength of the Russian government and continuous false “optimism,”
as the writers gently call it, about the military exploits of Russia’s
enemies, the “white hopes,” Kolchak and Denekin. The writers expressly
state that they did not select the _Times_ because it is worse than
other papers but, on the contrary, because it “is one of the really
great newspapers of the world.” “Rich” or “powerful” would have been a
better word than “great.” The sources of error in the Times were the
Associated Press, the special correspondents of the Times, government
officials and political factions hostile to the present Russian
régime. Among the offenders was the United States Government or the
journalistic fake-factory in or adjacent to the Department of State. At
this writing the article in the _New Republic_ has been out nearly a
year, that in the _Nation_ more than a year. It is fair to assume that
they have been seen by the managers of the _Times_ and other powerful
journalists, that if there was any misstatement the weekly journals
would have been forced to recant, which they have not done, and that if
the Ochses of the newspaper world had any conscience they would have
been at least more careful after such devastating exposures. But the
game of “Lying about Lenin” goes merrily on.
The American government and the American press have not been more
mendacious in their treatment of Russia than the governments and the
press of other nations, but they have been more persistently stupid
and unteachable in the face of facts. The British government has been
engaged in an agile zigzag retreat from its first position of no
intercourse with Russia, and when the London _Labour Herald_ exposed
the trick of Lloyd George which consisted of printing and sending out
_from Russia_ propaganda against the Soviet government, the prince of
political liars was obliged to stop that fraud. On the other hand one
of the first acts of our new administration was Mr. Hughes’s idiotic
confirmation of the attitude held by the old administration, and he
furnished the newspapers real news, since the Secretary’s opinions,
however stupid, are real news, to add to their previous accumulation
of ignorance and lies, and thereby encouraged them in their evil ways.
If a government is composed of noodles and rogues, the press which
reports the activities of the government and the opinions of its
officials is only secondarily responsible for deceiving the public.
The editors might be more critical in sifting the true from the false.
But the newspaper has no motive for trying to correct the inherent
vices of business and government; it does not originate those vices but
merely concurs in them and reflects them. The newspaper is primarily
responsible only for the stupidity and mendacity of its correspondents
and editors. It is not an independent institution with its own ethic,
with either will or full opportunity to serve the truth, but is only
the symptom and expression of the vast corruption that lies behind it
and of the dense popular ignorance that stands gaping before it.