IV

_The Mannerisms of Stentor_

A problem for the consideration of the Dictators of the Press is

that of reconciling the up-to-date nature of the modern newspaper

in most respects with its extraordinary conservatism in others,

an inconsistency that affords genuine amusement to the student of

contemporary life and manners. The Press is still old-fashioned enough

to regard Woman (with a very large “W”) as a remarkable creature that

has only just been discovered. Her slightest and most inconsequential

doings are regarded as of the most compelling interest. “Women Present

at Football Match” declaim the headlines, and the game is immediately

vested with a special and romantic atmosphere.[7]

[7] I do not dilate on this theme, since it has so admirably

been expounded by Rose Macaulay, who is human enough to rebel

against her sex being treated by the Press as though it were

almost human.

Again, we have progressed beyond the “Book of Snobs,” but “public

schoolboy,” “old Etonian,” “wife of Ex-M.P.,” and “Colonel” are still

imagined by sub-editors to be invested in the reader’s mind with

an aura denied to the mass of human beings. As for members of the

nobility, let an amiable and undistinguished peer die of heart failure

in his eightieth year, or collide in his motor car with a taxi-cab, and

the news is conveyed to a bored public by means of special contents

bills. For the public is bored, when it is not disgusted, by these

endeavours to make the world safe for Snobocracy. Yet a journalist who

attempted to point out that both social values and news values had

altered since the days of the Great Exhibition, and, in particular,

since the Great War, would be told that he did not know his business

and that he was most certainly a Bolshevik.

Again, while proprietors and editors long ago realised the implication

of Northcliffe’s discovery that Woman was a creature of sufficient

intelligence and curiosity to read a newspaper (even if only for the

advertisements of drapers), they still regard her in the light of

an intellectual crétin so far as concerns the provision of reading

matter. If any critic consider this statement too severe, let him――or

her――concentrate exclusively for the next two days on the fashion and

“Society” columns and the “Woman’s Pages” of the Popular Press.

Moreover, the editorial conception of women is that they are without

exception possessed of inexhaustible means, leisure, and ability to

make holiday at expensive resorts all the year round and to attend all

the costliest “functions” as a matter of course. No other explanation

of the fatuous drivel offered up for the special delectation of female

readers offers itself to the reasoning mind.

Do you think I have been unfair? Then read this characteristic

paragraph from an evening paper, headed “Earnest Young Women”:

“It must not be thought that the American girl merely dances

her way through life. Not at all. She must have variety,

therefore she dabbles lightly in art, literature, politics, or

philanthropy. She has days for visiting hospitals or other

institutions or she makes political speeches as Miss Barbara

Sands, grand-daughter of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, has been

doing recently, and as Sarah Murray Butler does all the time,

or she even takes up business in her odd moments, like Elinor

Dorrance, who at eighteen has decided to know all about the

famous Campbell soups company of which her father is head and

which she will inherit.”

This is not parody. It is the real thing, complete with snobbishness,

clichés, naïveté, and the conviction that it doesn’t in the least

matter how you write or what you write about so long as you are writing

for other women. And it is published in a paper whose owners lay stress

on the fact that it caters especially for intelligent and cultured

womanhood.

“The famous Campbell soups company.” “Famous” is the sub-editor’s

favourite word,[8] applied by him with unwearying zeal to all men and

women who have ever got themselves in the public eye――unless they are

really famous――applied even to furniture polishes, blends of whisky,

and popular cigarettes. The sub-editor, that romantic soul, also

assumes that the normal behaviour of the notorious or the merely

well-known is flamboyant, so that when they manage their affairs

without limelight they are “quietly married,” or they “leave quietly”

for their honeymoon. The one thing the Press will in no circumstances

permit them to do is to die quietly.

[8] “Amazing,” “mystery,” “thrilling,” and “dramatic” are also

hot favourites in the Stock Phrase Stakes.

Is it not time that the pages of the Press were one quarter so

up-to-date as the machinery which prints them? and that “journalese”

should cease to be a synonym for the vapid, the crude, the provincial,

and the semi-illiterate?

Impartiality being even rarer than commonsense, no one would be foolish

enough to demand from a newspaper either complete lack of bias, or the

presentation with equal prominence of both sides of a controversial

case. Such impartiality would be contrary to human nature. But natural

prejudice does not necessarily involve the deliberate distortion of

news.

News can be, and is, habitually manipulated both by distortion and

suppression. The first procedure is, on the whole, less objectionable,

since a little knowledge on the part of a reader will often enable him

to realise that a case is being overstated. Moreover, he may allow for

the known political complexion of a journal. Suppression assumes two

shapes, partial and complete. The latter, which is the more unusual,

comes into play when a newspaper does not find it convenient or politic

to give publicity to events or ideas, but this reticence does not

necessarily spring from sinister or interested motives. Indeed, it may

simply be because the news editor, who lives in a curious world of

his own, often remote from the contacts of the outer world, and who

is avid only of stereotyped sensations, fails to recognise news when

it is thrust under his nose. In such instances, a rival may possibly

recognise “news value.” Or again, he may not.

This partial suppression, of which the Socialist newspapers are quite

as guilty as the so-called “Capitalist Press” denounced by them for the

practice, is one of the deadliest weapons in the armoury of journalism.

Let it be clearly understood that we are concerned here not so much

with a matter of unfairness or injustice to an individual or a section

of the community, as with injustice to the community as a whole, which

is deliberately and systematically deprived of knowledge of all the

facts necessary to form a judgment regarding the issues at stake in a

question which may affect the national well-being.

For instance, it is impossible for the average newspaper reader to

form a detached opinion of the rights and wrongs of a coal strike.

The miners’ wages are alternatively exaggerated and minimised;

exceptionally high earnings in the coal fields are paraded as typical

of the average for the industry as a whole; or the earnings of coal

hewers are represented at much below the real level on the strength

of figures including the wages of boys and surface workers. All these

facts are readily available and accessible in any modern newspaper

office. But only a selection of them is published by any one paper.

Again, to take an example of complete suppression, the curtain may

never be lifted by the Press on a political or other scandal of which

the exposure is emphatically in the public interest. Such a boycott

may be just as much due to the belief that the subject has no news

value as to any ulterior reasons. But the injury to the community is

the same in either event. Newspaper readers are not concerned with the

motives animating editors and proprietors; they _are_ concerned with

the results of those motives.

V

_The Newspaper of To-Morrow_

The professional will not, of course, be entirely eliminated from

journalism. Despite their love of the amateur, newspaper proprietors

realise that his place is not among the reporters, the news editors,

the sub-editors, the financial editors, or the “art editors”――whose

concern lies not with art, but with news photographs. As to editors,

that is another matter. The rôle of editor tends more and more to

become that of conduit pipe between staff and proprietary, whose views

and policy he is called on to expound and further. So that the amateur

will add the editorial chair to his Press conquests. Indeed, he has

already made a beginning.

One figures the popular “dailies” of the next decade, with their

signed articles by film stars, politicians, jockeys, footballers,

tennis players, and racing motorists. One visualises their Women’s

Page, Beauty Hints, and Guide to the Fashions, ostensibly conducted

by popular actresses whose time is already fully occupied in meeting

the conflicting claims of the Stage and of “Society.” One foresees

the daily sermon by the proprietor’s pet divine, and the daily health

article by the medical man who regards the stylo as more lucrative

than the scalpel. One foresees also an immense increase in the

number of photographs and other pictures, aided by the development

of telephotography, television, and air transport. The motorist, the

golfer, the collector of antique furniture, the amateur gardener, the

investor, will find more space devoted to their special interests.

There may even be room for an increase in the amount of space (if

not of the quality) devoted to book reviews, although this forecast

is admittedly optimistic. (What the public is supposed to want is

not literary criticism, but “gossip” about the personal habits, the

clothes, the recreations, the holidays, and the monetary earnings of

authors.)

The leading articles will remain, partly through conservatism, and in

part because of their utility for purposes of propaganda and “uplift.”

The serial story will improve in quality, since that is one of the

logical sequences of the passion for well-known names. More and larger

prizes will be awarded for guessing contests and other competitions.

The scope of newspaper insurance will be extended, although this

function may ultimately be curtailed or even cease when the process of

Trustification has gone so far that individual journals will no longer

be under the necessity of trying to abstract each others’ readers.

The pictures and stories for the nursery (and what the nursery really

thinks of some of these efforts for its entertainment would surprise

their purveyors) will be raised to the dignity of a whole page,

complete with editor, the latter probably the wife of an ex-Cabinet

Minister. The Sabbath will be kept holy by an increase in the space

devoted to autobiographies of contemporary criminals and the retelling

of old crimes. In short, the Newspaper will have travelled a stage

further on the road to supplant the book, to supplement the playhouse.

It is pertinent at this point to refer to one of the seeming paradoxes

of the modern Press, the diminution of its influence as its circulation

and wealth have increased. Strictly speaking, the process has rather

been one of a shifting of the centre of influence. When circulations

were small, readers belonged to the influential classes. A leading

article in the _Times_ could cause the Cabinet to reflect, could

influence European chancelleries, could even exercise a definite effect

on projected legislation. In much the same way as the importance of the

individual voter has diminished with every broadening of the basis of

the franchise, so has the nature of the old influence of the Press on

public affairs declined with growth in circulations.

“Government by newspaper” has been denounced by politicians when

the views expressed by a journal have not happened to coincide with

theirs, but hitherto it is the endeavour rather than the realisation

which has been criticised. A newspaper can and does influence the

Cabinet in relatively unimportant matters, such as the propriety of

commercial advertising by post-mark; it no longer succeeds in swaying

the Administration in the matter of a first-class legislative measure,

or in inducing it to sanction a reform or a change desired by the

majority of electors; despite almost unanimous newspaper criticism of

the retention of certain war-time regulations, such as those governing

the hours during which it is licit to sell chocolate or cigarettes, the

Home Secretary is still able to say that he is so far unaware of any

widespread public demand for a relaxation of these restrictions.[9]

[9] Since this has been written, a committee has been set up to

inquire into the regulations in question.

But against the decline in the direct political influence of the Press

there has to be set the growth of its influence over the community.

The expansion both of circulations and of the field of interests

catered for by the newspaper, already touched on in these pages, has

helped immensely to develop the “newspaper habit.” It is a matter

of elementary psychology that the average man and woman cannot help

being influenced by the day-to-day exposition of political and other

questions in the columns of their newspapers. Let any journal adopt

the consistent policy of blackening the leaders of Soviet Russia

or belauding Mussolini, and the infamy of the Bolsheviks or the

disinterestedness and greatness of the Italian dictator becomes a

creed to hundreds of thousands. Let the whole Press unite in the same

shout, and that is the tendency under its present controllers, and the

result is mass suggestion of a nature and intensity which causes the

Press to mould the public opinion of whole nations. So that although an

individual newspaper or a combination of newspapers may be powerless

directly to affect the policy of a Cabinet, it is daily operating to

sway the minds of the people and thus, indirectly, to sway Governments

through the ultimate effect of mass suggestion in action during the

period of a general election or a political crisis.

And this is the work of a handful of men who――it is no reproach to

them――are temperamentally unfitted for the enormous responsibilities

which they have assumed so light-heartedly, so casually――as casually as

though they were “cornering” chewing gum.

Newspaper proprietors assert that in fact, their editors have a

free hand, and attempt to prove this contention by pointing to

differences in policy or treatment manifested by newspapers under

the same control. One is at some difficulty in deciding whether this

argument is the fruit of ingenious or of merely ingenuous minds. The

_Evening Standard_, for instance, may not see eye to eye with the

_Daily Express_ in such matters as the morality of modern dancing or

the retention of old churches in the City of London, but a strike, a

political crisis, a general election, the issue of war or peace, will

witness a unanimity of editorial comment which goes beyond the limits

of sheer coincidence. The _mot d’ordre_ has been given.

The Press of to-morrow will have to regard wireless and the kinema as

potential rivals. Both occupy a position analogous to the newspaper,

inasmuch as their popularity is largely due to the lack of mental

resources in the average man and woman, and their active disinclination

to read anything calling for concentration or sustained effort. The

Popular Press, Broadcasting and the “Movies” are alike variants of

the “Daily Dope.” Furthermore, the Press has itself largely helped to

popularise its potential competitors through the immense publicity

which it accords them.

In England, broadcasting has hitherto not trenched on the province

of the newspaper because of the archaic restrictions imposed on the

transmission of news by wireless, which is virtually limited to a brief

re-hash of the evening papers, together with weather forecasts. But

it is impossible that these restrictions will be allowed to prevail

indefinitely, even if only for the reason that “listeners-in” are able

to compare the service with that provided by Continental broadcasting

agencies, who are not fettered by the Mandarins of the Post Office. As

a matter of fact, the new British Broadcasting Corporation, which is

a Government Department, possesses powers to do almost anything that

can be done by a newspaper. Some of those powers it will certainly

use, and there is nothing to prevent the Corporation from adding to

its functions that of purveyor of propaganda for the Government of

the day. The transmission of official news, and the development of an

Inter-Empire news service it will certainly undertake.

But these are relatively minor matters. The real competitive

possibilities of wireless lie in the fact that it brings the outer

world into the homes of the millions at precisely those hours between

the publication of the latest evening paper and the appearance of the

morning paper at the breakfast-table. As the bulk of the contents of a

morning paper are printed well before midnight, wireless transmission

of news from seven o’clock in the evening until eleven or twelve would

skim the cream off the next day’s papers. Whether the Press should

retaliate by establishing a wireless service of its own (impossible

in England save by means of coöperation with the British Broadcasting

Corporation, which possesses a double-riveted, State-enforced monopoly)

or by issuing later editions of the evening papers than is now

customary, will become a matter for the consideration of its conductors.

For, insofar as concerns the dissemination of news, the wireless can

clearly do as well as, if not better, than the newspaper. And it can

do it at smaller cost to the subscriber. No one would, of course,

seriously suggest that wireless transmission of news will drive the

newspapers out of business, or even that it will seriously affect

their circulation or revenue. But it is obvious that if broadcasting

compete with the Press in the publication of news (and the Press will

be powerless to stop it in England and unable to do so elsewhere unless

wireless be brought within the scope of Newspaper Trusts) then the

Press must strengthen its hold on the public in those fields where

wireless cannot compete, or cannot compete so well. So it will enlarge

its field of comment. It will become more and more of a miscellany.

It will devote more and more attention to crusades and “uplift.” It

will become more and more of a pulpit, and a lecture theatre for the

physician. Above all, it will more and more strive to mould public

opinion.

The rivalry of the Kinema will be of a subtler and less direct nature.

Both the Popular Press and the “Pictures” appeal largely to a class

which is easier to reach through the eye than through an appeal to the

intellect, which demands a little imagination. The popular newspapers

have lately begun to break out in a pictorial eczema throughout their

pages. But the kinema, with its extremely well-organised service for

recording and exhibiting events of the hour, leaves the newspaper miles

in the rear. An evening paper can print photographs of the Derby or the

Boat Race within a few minutes of their being taken. But it cannot show

the whole progress of the race within a couple of hours after it has

been run. Television, already a scientific achievement, and to-morrow

a possible “commercial proposition,” will also come to the aid both

of the Kinema and the Wireless. How does the Press propose to meet

the actualities of the picture theatre and the possibilities of new

inventions for the photographic recording and reproduction of events?