News, that is, information with regard to those things which affect us
but which are not within our own immediate view, is necessary to the
life of the State.
The obvious, the extremely cheap, the _universal_ means of propagating
it, is by word of mouth.
A man has seen a thing; many men have seen a thing. They testify to
that thing, and others who have heard them repeat their testimony. The
Press thrust into the midst of this natural system (which is still
that upon which all reasonable men act, whenever they can, in matters
most nearly concerning them) two novel features, both of them
exceedingly corrupting. In the first place, it gave to the printed
words a _rapidity of extension_ with which repeated spoken words could
not compete. In the second place, it gave them a _mechanical
similarity_ which was the very opposite to the marks of healthy human
news.
I would particularly insist upon this last point. It is little
understood and it is vital.
If we want to know what to think of a fire which has taken place many
miles away, but which affects property of our own, we listen to the
accounts of dozens of men. We rapidly and instinctively differentiate
between these accounts according to the characters of the witnesses.
Equally instinctively, we counter-test these accounts by the inherent
probabilities of the situation.
An honest and sober man tells us that the roof of the house fell in.
An imaginative fool, who is also a swindler, assures us that he later
saw the roof standing. We remember that the roof was of iron girders
covered with wood, and draw this conclusion: That the framework still
stands, but that the healing fell through in a mass of blazing
rubbish. Our common sense and our knowledge of the situation incline
us rather to the bad than to the good witness, and we are right. But
the Press cannot of its nature give a great number of separate
testimonies. These would take too long to collect, and would be too
expensive to collect. Still less is it able to deliver the weight of
each. It, therefore, presents us, even at its best when the testimony
is not tainted, no more than one crude affirmation. This one relation
is, as I have said, further propagated unanimously and with extreme
rapidity. Instead of an organic impression formed at leisure in the
comparison of many human sources, the reader obtains a mechanical one.
At the same moment myriads of other men receive this same impression.
Their adherence to it corroborates his own. Even therefore when the
disseminator of the news, that is, the owner of the newspaper, has no
special motive for lying, the message is conveyed in a vitiated and
inhuman form. Where he has a motive for lying (as he usually has) his
lie can outdo any merely spoken or written truth.
If this be true of news and of its vitiation through the Press, it is
still truer of opinions and suggested ideas.
Opinions, above all, we judge by the personalities of those who
deliver them: by voice, tone, expression, and known character. The
Press eliminates three-quarters of all by which opinion may be judged.
And yet it presents the opinion with the more force. The idea is
presented in a sort of impersonal manner that impresses with peculiar
power because it bears a sort of detachment, as though it came from
some authority too secure and superior to be questioned. It is
suddenly communicated to thousands. It goes unchallenged, unless by
some accident another controller of such machines will contradict it
and can get his contradiction read by the same men as have read the
first statement.
These general characters were present in the Press even in its
infancy, when each news-sheet still covered but a comparatively small
circle; when distribution was difficult, and when the audience
addressed was also select and in some measure able to criticize
whatever was presented to it. But though present they had no great
force; for the adventure of a newspaper was limited. The older method
of obtaining news was still remembered and used. The regular readers
of anything, paper or book, were few, and those few cared much more
for the quality of what they read than for its amount. Moreover, they
had some means of judging its truth and value.
In this early phase, moreover, the Press was necessarily highly
diverse. One man could print and sell profitably a thousand copies of
his version of a piece of news, of his opinions, or those of his
clique. There were hundreds of other men who, if they took the pains,
had the means to set out a rival account and a rival opinion. We shall
see how, as Capitalism grew, these safeguards decayed and the bad
characters described were increased to their present enormity.