I say that the few newspaper controllers govern; and govern
abominably. I am right. But they only do so, as do all new powers, by
at once alliance with, and treason against, the old: witness
Harmsworth and the politicians. The new governing Press is an
oligarchy which still works "in with" the just-less-new parliamentary
oligarchy.
This connection has developed in the great Capitalist papers a certain
character which can be best described by the term "Official."
Under certain forms of arbitrary government in Continental Europe
ministers once made use of picked and rare newspapers to express their
views, and these newspapers came to be called "The Official Press." It
was a crude method, and has been long abandoned even by the simpler
despotic forms of government. Nothing of that kind exists now, of
course, in the deeper corruption of modern Europe--least of all in
England.
What has grown up here is a Press organization of support and favour
to the system of professional politics which colours the whole of our
great Capitalist papers to-day in England. This gives them so distinct
a character, of parliamentary falsehood, and that falsehood is so
clearly dictated by their connection with executive power that they
merit the title "Official."
The regime under which we are now living is that of a Plutocracy which
has gradually replaced the old Aristocratic tradition of England.
This Plutocracy--a few wealthy interests--in part controls, in part is
expressed by, is in part identical with the professional politicians,
and it has in the existing Capitalist Press an ally similar to that
"Official Press" which continental nations knew in the past. But there
is this great difference, that the "Official Press" of Continental
experiments never consisted in more than a few chosen organs the
character of which was well known, and the attitude of which
contrasted sharply with the rest. But _our_ "official Press" (for it
is no less) covers the whole field. It has in the region of the great
newspapers no competitor; indeed, it has no competitors at all, save
that small Free Press, of which I shall speak in a moment, and which
is its sole antagonist.
If any one doubts that this adjective "official" can properly be
applied to our Capitalist Press to-day, let him ask himself first what
the forces are which govern the nation, and next, whether those
forces--that Government or regime--could be better served even under a
system of permanent censorship than it is in the great dailies of
London and the principal provincial capitals.
Is not everything which the regime desires to be suppressed,
suppressed? Is not everything which it desires suggested, suggested?
And is there any public question which would weaken the regime, and
the discussion of which is ever allowed to appear in the great
Capitalist journals?
There has not been such a case for at least twenty years. The current
simulacrum of criticism apparently attacking some portion of the
regime, never deals with matters vital to its prestige. On the
contrary, it deliberately side-tracks any vital discussion that
sincere conviction may have forced upon the public, and spoils the
scent with false issues.
One paper, not a little while ago, was clamouring against the excess
of lawyers in Government. Its remedy was an opposition to be headed by
a lawyer.
Another was very serious upon secret trading with the enemy. It
suppressed for months all reference to the astounding instance of that
misdemeanour by the connections of a very prominent professional
politician early in the war, and refused to comment on the single
reference made to this crime in the House of Commons!
Another clamours for the elimination of enemy financial power in the
affairs of this country, and yet says not a word upon the auditing of
the secret Party Funds!
I say that the big daily papers have now not only those other
qualities dangerous to the State which I have described, but that they
have become essentially "official," that is, insincere and corrupt in
their interested support of that plutocratic complex which, in the
decay of aristocracy, governs England. They are as official in this
sense as were ever the Court organs of ephemeral Continental
experiments. All the vices, all the unreality, and all the peril that
goes with the existence of an official Press is stamped upon the great
dailies of our time. They are not independent where Power is
concerned. They do not really criticize. They serve a clique whom they
should expose, and denounce and betray the generality--that is the
State--for whose sake the salaried public servants should be
perpetually watched with suspicion and sharply kept in control.
The result is that the mass of Englishmen have ceased to obtain, or
even to expect, information upon the way they are governed.
They are beginning to feel a certain uneasiness. They know that their
old power of observation over public servants has slipped from them.
They suspect that the known gross corruption of Public life, and
particularly of the House of Commons, is entrenched behind a
conspiracy of silence on the part of those very few who have the power
to inform them. But, as yet, they have not passed the stage of such
suspicion. They have not advanced nearly as far as the discovery of
the great newspaper owners and their system. They are still, for the
most part, duped.
This transitional state of affairs (for I hope to show that it is only
transitional) is a very great evil. It warps and depletes public
information. It prevents the just criticism of public servants. Above
all, it gives immense and _irresponsible_ power to a handful of
wealthy men--and especially to the one most wealthy and unscrupulous
among them--whose wealth is an accident of speculation, whose origins
are repulsive, and whose characters have, as a rule, the weakness and
baseness developed by this sort of adventures. There are, among such
gutter-snipes, thousands whose luck ends in the native gutter, half a
dozen whose luck lands them into millions, one or two at most who, on
the top of such a career go crazy with the ambition of the parvenu and
propose to direct the State. Even when gambling adventurers of this
sort are known and responsible (as they are in professional politics)
their power is a grave danger. Possessing as the newspaper owners do
every power of concealment and, at the same time, no shred of
responsibility to any organ of the State, they are a deadly peril. The
chief of these men are more powerful to-day than any Minister. Nay,
they do, as I have said (and it is now notorious), make and unmake
Ministers, and they may yet in our worst hour decide the national
fate.
* * * * *
Now to every human evil of a political sort that has appeared in
history (to every evil, that is, affecting the State, and proceeding
from the will of man--not from ungovernable natural forces outside
man) there comes a term and a reaction.
Here I touch the core of my matter. Side by side with what I have
called "the Official Press" in our top-heavy plutocracy there has
arisen a certain force for which I have a difficulty in finding a
name, but which I will call for lack of a better name "the Free
Press."
I might call it the "independent" Press were it not that such a word
would connote as yet a little too much power, though I do believe its
power to be rising, and though I am confident that it will in the near
future change our affairs.
I am not acquainted with any other modern language than French and
English, but I read this Free Press French and English, Colonial and
American regularly and it seems to me the chief intellectual
phenomenon of our time.
In France and in England, and for all I know elsewhere, there has
arisen in protest against the complete corruption and falsehood of
the great Capitalist papers a crop of new organs which _are_ in the
strictest sense of the word "organs of Opinion." I need not detain
English readers with the effect of this upon the Continent. It is
already sufficiently noteworthy in England alone, and we shall do well
to note it carefully.
"The New Age" was, I think, the pioneer in the matter. It still
maintains a pre-eminent position. I myself founded the "Eye-Witness"
in the same chapter of ideas (by which I do not mean at all with
similar objects of propaganda). Ireland has produced more than one
organ of the sort, Scotland one or two. Their number will increase.
With this I pass from the just denunciation of evil to the exposition
of what is good.
I propose to examine the nature of that movement which I call "The
Free Press," to analyse the disabilities under which it suffers, and
to conclude with my conviction that it is, in spite of its
disabilities, not only a growing force, but a salutary one, and, in a
certain measure, a conquering one. It is to this argument that I
shall now ask my readers to direct themselves.
X
The rise of what I have called "The Free Press" was due to a reaction
against what I have called "The Official Press." But this reaction was
not single in motive.
Three distinct moral motives lay behind it and converged upon it. We
shall do well to separate and recognize each, because each has had
it's effect upon the Free Press as a whole, and that Free Press bears
the marks of all three most strongly to-day.
The first motive apparent, coming much earlier than either of the
other two, was the motive of (A) _Propaganda_. The second motive was
(B) _Indignation against the concealment of Truth_, and the third
motive was (C) _Indignation against irresponsible power_: the sense of
oppression which an immoral irresponsibility in power breeds among
those who are unhappily subject to it.
Let us take each of these in their order.