II

_The Nature of Stentor_

What is a newspaper? Ask any editor or proprietor, and he will tell

you that its primary function is the dissemination of news, and

its secondary, but none the less immensely important, task is that

of commenting on the happenings of to-day or forecasting those of

to-morrow, with the object of educating the community and guiding

public opinion. So we are frequently informed, in rotund periods, by

noble lords who respond to the toast of The Press at public feastings.

What, actually, is a newspaper? To begin with, it contains

advertisements, mainly of women’s dress, soaps, face creams and

powders, chocolate, beer, whisky, tobacco, and motor cars. Democracy’s

needs.

Then there is a page of pictures, gathered at great expense from the

ends of the earth, often transmitted by aeroplane, and providing a

feast of new hats and evening wraps from Paris, railway accidents,

shipwrecks, upturned tramcars and motor lorries that have fallen into

ditches, the more or less recognisable portraits of men and women

performing at the Divorce Courts or for some other reason temporarily

in the public eye, photographs of film actresses, and pictures of the

diversions of the Rich at the races, on the moors, on the Lido, and on

the Riviera. Democracy’s peep-show.

After these hors d’œuvres come the leading articles, letters to the

editor, “nature notes” straight from Fleet Street, an instalment of a

serial story depicting a life such as was never lived on land or sea,

pictures which are believed to amuse the children, and “leader page

articles” largely contributed (or at least signed) by doctors, divines,

the wives of ex-Cabinet Ministers, Russian Princesses, actresses,

and――occasionally――journalists.

There are also articles in which women are instructed how to dress,

cook, arrange a luncheon table, plan schemes of interior decoration,

pack their trunks for a holiday, economise in the household, and retain

the affection of their husbands.

The residue is news.

But not all of it.

For much of this residue is news only in a specialised and restricted

sense. City notes, produce market notes, the movements of shipping,

and golf, bridge, gardening, or motoring notes do not appeal to every

reader. Nor, for that matter, does literary criticism, or the critiques

of plays, films, concerts, and picture exhibitions.

But the residue of the residue is news. And that includes “gossip” by

ladies and gentlemen apparently on terms of the utmost intimacy with

Royalty and the nobility and gentry, the deaths of centenarians, the

bright sayings of witnesses at police courts, the witty sayings of

judges, the wise sayings of magistrates, and the futile sayings of

coroners.

Add a crossword puzzle, and you have a newspaper. Democracy’s Mentor.

New inventions and institutions achieve popularity in accordance with

the readiness with which they lend themselves to vulgarisation. So it

has been with wireless and the kinema, and so it is with the Press.

Cynics may say that every country has the newspapers it deserves, but

that begs the question. The mass of the public undoubtedly likes its

newspapers well enough (without having any very great respect for them)

but it also likes novels and film plays entirely devoid of artistic

value, just as it likes third-rate music and fourth-rate pictures. The

real question is how far is popular taste natural, and how far has it

been debauched by those who aim at giving the public what it wants,

or what it is supposed to want. A brewer who succeeds in inducing his

customers to acquire a taste for doctored or synthetic beer may be

entitled to say that he is giving them what they like. But he is not

entitled to say that they are incapable of appreciating unadulterated

malt and hops, or that they would really prefer the genuine article if

they were allowed a free choice between the two.

When compulsory schooling led to an immense and sudden increase in

the number of people able to read without difficulty, well-meaning

enthusiasts rejoiced at the prospect of the artisan beguiling his

leisure with Dante, Milton, Schopenhauer, Ruskin, Darwin, George Eliot,

or the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Actually, these newcomers to the

world of letters turned mostly to the penny novelette and the “bitty”

weekly. They might have patronised something better if the pioneers

of reading matter for the million had made the experiment of seeing

whether there was a market for something better. But the experiment was

not made. And it was on the basis of a culture largely represented by

the “snippety” weekly, that the creators of newspapers for the million

began to build about a generation ago.

Let it be conceded that their intentions were largely laudable. The

appeal of the newspaper had previously been restricted to a degree

almost incredible to contemporary men and women under thirty. The

daily paper was the preserve of the well-to-do and the “comfortable

classes”; the masses bought evening papers for racing tips and other

sporting information, and on Sundays they were regaled with a ragôut of

the murders, the robberies, the assaults, the divorces, and the more

unsavoury police court cases of the week. Journals of international

repute, such as the _Times_, the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Neue Freie

Presse_, the _Journal des Débats_, sold fewer copies in a week than the

popular organs now dispose of in a day.

The Harmsworths, the Pearsons, the Hearsts, were to change all that. In

order to make the daily paper a necessity, or a habit, of the masses,

it was essential to depart from the pomposity of the older journals,

with their long and platitudinous leading articles about nothing in

particular, their unattractive “make-up,” their bald presentation of

news, the immense length of their police court reports, and their

adherence to the theory that the fall of a Cabinet in Patagonia was

of more interest to the reader than a murder on his doorstep. The

motto of the new Press was Brightness, Brevity, Enterprise, and

Cheapness. It introduced photographs. It presented its news more

attractively. It catered for the interests of women. It printed the

light, but informative, article on topics of the day, often written

by a specialist. It quickened up the transmission both of the news

and of the newspaper. It aimed, in short, at mirroring passing events

for the multitude rather than providing reading matter to be digested

at leisure by the banker, the lawyer, the country gentleman, and the

politician. And it succeeded remarkably――up to a point.

But man cannot live by brightness alone. And brightness became a

fetish. Insensibly, and on the whole probably unconsciously, at least

at first, the newspaper made excessive sacrifices in the pursuit of its

passion for the purely readable. It concentrated on the tabloid and the

snippet. It plastered its pages with pictures, so that we have reached

the stage at which if Dean Inge, Bernard Shaw, the ex-Kaiser, President

Coolidge, Mr. Lloyd George, or Mr. Charles Chaplin be mentioned on

six consecutive days of the week by the same paper, each mention will

be accompanied by a photograph, usually the same photograph, the size

of a postage stamp. Similarly, the obsession of the Press for “human

interest stories” (a characteristic legitimate enough in itself) has

been developed to the point at which the wives and mothers of condemned

murderers are interviewed directly after the verdict with a request

for their comments on the justice of the sentence, while respectable

householders are despatched with cameras to photograph the tears of

miners’ widows after a colliery accident.

“Human interest” with a vengeance. But the worst feature of this

vulgarisation of the popular Press is the resulting vulgarisation

of the public. News editors would not instruct their reporters to

interview divorcées, husbands whose wives have just been killed in

motor accidents, or bereaved mothers, unless journalistic insistence

as the “personal touch” had so greatly succeeded in banning decent

reticence. The law does not punish such outrages on public taste,

although it punishes many offences of far smaller detriment to the

community.

Side by side with vulgarisation is persistent falsification of

values. The Press promotes mass hysteria, as is shown by the excesses

accompanying the visits of American film stars to England or of

European queens to the United States. It consistently denounces

the very evils, or imaginary evils for whose creation it is itself

so largely responsible, finding, for instance, good “copy” both in

detailed descriptions of a play alleged to be lewd, and in criticisms

of the same play by clergymen who have not seen it. And it is driving

privacy from the world by its discovery of the new creed that if the

pen be mightier than the sword, the camera is mightier than either.

Insistence on the personal note has also brought in its train a

Mumbo-Jumbo belief in the virtue of names. It is assumed that the

public will attach more importance to an article signed with a name

with which it is familiar than by an unsigned contribution, and

although this theory is based on a certain element of fact, it is in

practice overworked to the point of nausea. The reader will no doubt

attach special importance to an article under the signature of Arnold

Bennett, or H. G. Wells, especially if it deal with a subject with

which the writer is particularly identified. He will also be more

impressed by an article on tennis by Suzanne Lenglen than by an equally

good but anonymous contribution. But is he equally impressed by the

fact that a column of platitudes on motherhood, the contemporary

young woman, or the decay of church-going, is signed by a, no doubt,

estimable lady, whose only claim to public distinction is that she is

the wife of an ex-Lord Mayor or the bearer of an obscure Hungarian

title? Editors and proprietors apparently think so, thus indicating

their cynical estimate of the level of public intelligence.

Furthermore, this passion for names is responsible for the perpetration

of the grossest frauds on the public. It is notorious in Fleet Street

that articles alleged to be contributed by politicians, musical comedy

actresses, film stars, and professional footballers are, in fact,

often not written by the illustrious who are their reputed authors.

Indeed, the illustrious are as like as not incapable of writing a page

of grammatical English, as is also the case with the self-advertising

commercial magnate, whose reputed views on economic questions or

industrial co-operation, neatly typed and flanked by carefully

touched-up photographs, descend on the desks of editors in the company

of the pigeon-English letters of pushful publicity agents.

But this fraud on the public, and there is no other name for a species

of false pretence which is growing so rapidly that it is developing

into an open scandal, is, relatively, a minor affair. The real evil

is that the controllers of the Press, themselves largely amateurs,

are going out of their way to encourage the incursion of the amateur

into what is a highly-skilled and highly-complex avocation. And that

constitutes the real false pretence. It does not matter very much

whether that popular film comedienne, Miss Ruby Vamp, is actually

responsible or not for the article on “Should Curates Charleston?”

extensively and expensively advertised by the “Daily Dope.” But it

does matter if the public be led to believe that an article on foreign

relations written to order by a hack journalist for the purpose of

provoking a sensation or promoting the policy of a newspaper proprietor

should purport to be, and should be accepted, as from the pen of an

impartial diplomatic expert, who has, in fact, only lent his name in

return for money or for purposes of self-advertisement.[1]

[1] In December last, the Lawn Tennis Association passed

resolutions prohibiting a competitor in tournaments and

matches from writing articles thereon for the Press “under

his own name, initials, or recognisable pseudonym,” and also

from allowing a player to permit his name to be “advertised

as the author of any book or press article of which he is

not the actual author.” This resolution was boycotted by a

portion of the Combine Press, while one newspaper distorted

the attitude of the Association as representing “interference

with amateurs,” and “dictating to newspaper proprietors and

editors.” Imperence.