I say that our interest lies in the question of degree. It always
does. The philosopher said: "All things are a matter of degree; and
who shall establish degree?" But I think we are agreed--and by "we" I
mean all educated men with some knowledge of the world around us--that
the degree to which the suppression of truth, the propagation of
falsehood, the artificial creation of opinion, and the boycott of
inconvenient doctrine have reached in the great Capitalist Press for
some time past in England, is at least dangerously high.
There is no one in public life but could give dozens of examples from
his own experience of perfectly sensible letters to the Press, citing
irrefutable testimony upon matters of the first importance, being
refused publicity. Within the guild of the journalists, there is not a
man who could not give you a hundred examples of deliberate
suppression and deliberate falsehood by his employers both as regards
news important to the nation and as regards great bodies of opinion.
Equally significant with the mere vast numerical accumulation of such
instances is their quality.
Let me give a few examples. No straightforward, common-sense, _real_
description of any professional politician--his manners, capacities,
way of speaking, intelligence--ever appears to-day in any of the great
papers. We never have anything within a thousand miles of what men who
meet them _say_.
We are, indeed, long past the time when the professional politicians
were treated as revered beings of whom an inept ritual description had
to be given. But the substitute has only been a putting of them into
the limelight in another and more grotesque fashion, far less
dignified, and quite equally false.
We cannot even say that the professional politicians are still made to
"fill the stage." That metaphor is false, because upon a stage the
audience knows that it is all play-acting, and actually _sees_ the
figures.
Let any man of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the
scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary
professional politicians is speaking.
It would not be an exciting description. The truth here would not be a
violent or dangerous truth. Let him but write soberly and with truth.
Let him write it as private letters are daily written in dozens about
such folk, or as private conversation runs among those who know them,
and who have no reason to exaggerate their importance, but see them as
they are. Such a description would never be printed! The few owners of
the Press will not turn off the limelight and make a brief, accurate
statement about these mediocrities, because their power to govern
depends upon keeping in the limelight the men whom they control.
Once let the public know what sort of mediocrities the politicians are
and they lose power. Once let them lose power and their hidden masters
lose power.
Take a larger instance: the middle and upper classes are never allowed
by any chance to hear in time the dispute which leads to a strike or a
lock-out.
Here is an example of news which is of the utmost possible importance
to the commonwealth, and to each of us individually. To understand
_why_ a vast domestic dispute has arisen is the very first necessity
for a sound civic judgment. But we never get it. The event
always comes upon us with violence and is always completely
misunderstood--because the Press has boycotted the men's claims.
I talked to dozens of people in my own station of life--that is, of
the professional middle classes--about the great building lock-out
which coincided with the outbreak of the War. _I did not find a single
one who knew that it was a lock-out at all!_ The few who did at least
know the difference between a strike and a lock-out, _all_ thought it
was a strike!
Let no one say that the disgusting falsehoods spread by the Press in
this respect were of no effect The men themselves gave in, and their
perfectly just demands were defeated, mainly because middle-class
opinion _and a great deal of proletarian opinion as well_ had been led
to believe that the builders' cessation of labour was a _strike_ due
to their own initiative against existing conditions, and thought the
operation of such an initiative immoral in time of war. They did not
know the plain truth that the provocation was the masters', and that
the men were turned out of employment, that is deprived of access to
the Capitalist stores of food and all other necessaries, wantonly and
avariciously by the masters. The Press would not print that enormous
truth.