It is customary to remark that modern problems cannot easily be
attacked because they are so complex. In many cases I believe it is
really because they are so simple. Nobody would believe in such
simplicity of scoundrelism even if it were pointed out. People would
say that the truth was a charge of mere melodramatic villainy;
forgetting that nearly all villains really are melodramatic. Thus, for
instance, we say that some good measures are frustrated or some bad
officials kept in power by the press and confusion of public business;
whereas very often the reason is simple healthy human bribery. And thus
especially we say that the Yellow Press is exaggerative,
over-emotional, illiterate, and anarchical, and a hundred other long
words; whereas the only objection to it is that it tells lies. We waste
our fine intellects in finding exquisite phraseology to fit a man, when
in a well-ordered society we ought to be finding handcuffs to fit him.
This criticism of the modern type of righteous indignation must have
come into many people’s minds, I think, in reading Dr. Horton’s
eloquent expressions of disgust at the “corrupt Press,” especially in
connection with the Limerick craze. Upon the Limerick craze itself, I
fear Dr. Horton will not have much effect; such fads perish before one
has had time to kill them. But Dr. Horton’s protest may really do good
if it enables us to come to some clear understanding about what is
really wrong with the popular Press, and which means it might be useful
and which permissible to use for its reform. We do not want a
censorship of the Press; but we are long past talking about that. At
present it is not we that silence the Press; it is the Press that
silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the
editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the
Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the Press we shall be rebelling,
not repressing. But shall we attack it?
Now it is just here that the chief difficulty occurs. It arises from
the very rarity and rectitude of those minds which commonly inaugurate
such crusades. I have the warmest respect for Dr. Horton’s thirst after
righteousness; but it has always seemed to me that his righteousness
would be more effective without his refinement. The curse of the
Nonconformists is their universal refinement. They dimly connect being
good with being delicate, and even dapper; with not being grotesque or
loud or violent; with not sitting down on one’s hat. Now it is always a
pleasure to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a duty. Certainly
it has nothing to do with sin; a man can be loudly and violently
virtuous—nay, he can be loudly and violently saintly, though that is
not the type of saintliness that we recognise in Dr. Horton. And as for
sitting on one’s hat, if it is done for any sublime object (as, for
instance, to amuse the children), it is obviously an act of very
beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and surrender of the symbol
of personal dignity upon the shrine of public festivity. Now it will
not do to attack the modern editor merely for being unrefined, like the
great mass of mankind. We must be able to say that he is immoral, not
that he is undignified or ridiculous. I do not mind the Yellow Press
editor sitting on his hat. My only objection to him begins to dawn when
he attempts to sit on my hat; or, indeed (as is at present the case),
when he proceeds to sit on my head.
But in reading between the lines of Dr. Horton’s invective one
continually feels that he is not only angry with the popular Press for
being unscrupulous: he is partly angry with the popular Press for being
popular. He is not only irritated with Limericks for causing a mean
money-scramble; he is also partly irritated with Limericks for being
Limericks. The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the
glare and blare of Bank Holiday. Now this is a motive which, however
human and natural, must be strictly kept out of the way. It takes all
sorts to make a world; and it is not in the least necessary that
everybody should have that love of subtle and unobtrusive perfections
in the matter of manners or literature which does often go with the
type of the ethical idealist. It is not in the least desirable that
everybody should be earnest. It is highly desirable that everybody
should be honest, but that is a thing that can go quite easily with a
coarse and cheerful character. But the ineffectualness of most protests
against the abuse of the Press has been very largely due to the
instinct of democracy (and the instinct of democracy is like the
instinct of one woman, wild but quite right) that the people who were
trying to purify the Press were also trying to refine it; and to this
the democracy very naturally and very justly objected. We are justified
in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are
not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean
our own manners. We have no right to purge the popular Press of all
that we think vulgar or trivial. Dr. Horton may possibly loathe and
detest Limericks just as I loathe and detest riddles; but I have no
right to call them flippant and unprofitable; there are wild people in
the world who like riddles. I am so afraid of this movement passing off
into mere formless rhetoric and platform passion that I will even come
close to the earth and lay down specifically some of the things that,
in my opinion, could be, and ought to be, done to reform the Press.
First, I would make a law, if there is none such at present, by which
an editor, proved to have published false news without reasonable
verification, should simply go to prison. This is not a question of
influences or atmospheres; the thing could be carried out as easily and
as practically as the punishment of thieves and murderers. Of course
there would be the usual statement that the guilt was that of a
subordinate. Let the accused editor have the right of proving this if
he can; if he does, let the subordinate be tried and go to prison. Two
or three good rich editors and proprietors properly locked up would
take the sting out of the Yellow Press better than centuries of Dr.
Horton.
Second, it’s impossible to pass over altogether the most unpleasant,
but the most important part of this problem. I will deal with it as
distantly as possible. I do not believe there is any harm whatever in
reading about murders; rather, if anything, good; for the thought of
death operates very powerfully with the poor in the creation of
brotherhood and a sense of human dignity. I do not believe there is a
pennyworth of harm in the police news, as such. Even divorce news,
though contemptible enough, can really in most cases be left to the
discretion of grown people; and how far children get hold of such
things is a problem for the home and not for the nation. But there is a
certain class of evils which a healthy man or woman can actually go
through life without knowing anything about at all. These, I say,
should be stamped and blackened out of every newspaper with the
thickest black of the Russian censor. Such cases should either be
always tried _in camera_ or reporting them should be a punishable
offence. The common weakness of Nature and the sins that flesh is heir
to we can leave people to find in newspapers. Men can safely see in the
papers what they have already seen in the streets. They may safely find
in their journals what they have already found in themselves. But we do
not want the imaginations of rational and decent people clouded with
the horrors of some obscene insanity which has no more to do with human
life than the man in Bedlam who thinks he is a chicken. And, if this
vile matter is admitted, let it be simply with a mention of the Latin
or legal name of the crime, and with no details whatever. As it is,
exactly the reverse is true. Papers are permitted to terrify and darken
the fancy of the young with innumerable details, but not permitted to
state in clean legal language what the thing is about. They are allowed
to give any fact about the thing except the fact that it is a sin.
Third, I would do my best to introduce everywhere the practice of
signed articles. Those who urge the advantages of anonymity are either
people who do not realise the special peril of our time or they are
people who are profiting by it. It is true, but futile, for instance,
to say that there is something noble in being nameless when a whole
corporate body is bent on a consistent aim: as in an army or men
building a cathedral. The point of modern newspapers is that there is
no such corporate body and common aim; but each man can use the
authority of the paper to further his own private fads and his own
private finances.