THE PRESS AND CRIME
You guess that this chapter will show how the press exploits crime for
its profit; and that sounds tiresome, you know all about that. You know
how the yellow journals take up murder cases and divorce cases and
sexual irregularities, and carry on campaigns of scandal, lasting for
months. You know how they send out their amateur sleuths, and work up a
case against some one, and make it a matter of journalistic prestige
that this person shall be hounded to jail.
No; this chapter does not deal with the crimes which the press exploits,
nor yet with the crimes which it invents. I could tell a hilarious
anecdote of a group of New York reporters assigned to the immigration
service, shy of news and bored to death, who cooked up a tale of an
imaginary murder by an imaginary Austrian countess, kept all New York
thrilled for a week, and “got away with it.” But all that is
comparatively nothing. The theme of this chapter is the crimes which the
press commits.
What is a crime? The definition is difficult; you have to know first who
commits it. Many things are crimes if done by workingmen, which are
virtuous public services if done by great corporations. It is a crime
when workingmen conspire to boycott; but it is no crime when newspapers
do it, when advertisers do it. It is a crime when an individual
threatens blackmail; but when a great newspaper does it, it is business
enterprise. For example, in Los Angeles there was started a municipal
newspaper, which was thriving. Gen. Harrison Gray Otis of the “Times”
sent agents to various advertisers to notify them that if they continued
to advertise in this paper they would be boycotted, blacklisted, and put
out of business. So the big advertisers deserted the municipal paper.
I have told in this book about many crimes committed by newspapers
against myself; not metaphorical crimes, but literal, legal crimes. It
was a crime when a Philadelphia reporter broke into my home and stole a
photograph. It was a crime when the “New York Evening Journal” sent
forged cablegrams to Dr. James P. Warbasse and Mrs. Jessica Finch
Cosgrave. It was a crime when the newspapers of New York bribed a
court-clerk to give them the testimony in my divorce case. Any lawyer
will tell you that these things are crimes, yet they are a recognized
part of the practice of American Journalism, and follow logically and
inevitably from the competitive sale of news.
Nietzsche says of the soul of man that it “hungers after knowledge as
the lion for his food.” Just so the yellow journals hunger after news,
and just so their proprietors hunger after profits. When profits are at
stake, they stop at nothing. I have quoted Hearst’s telegram to
Frederick Remington: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.” I
have told of Hearst’s ruffian conduct towards myself in the case of
Adelaide Branch. Do you think that a man who would commit such acts
would stop at anything? When Hearst ventured to run for governor of New
York State, his enemies brought out against him a mass of evidence,
showing that he had deliberately organized his newspapers so that the
corporations which published them owned no property, and children who
had been run down and crippled for life by Mr. Hearst’s delivery-wagons
could collect no damages from him.
Mr. Hearst poses as a friend of labor, but he keeps his newspapers on a
non-union basis, and when his employes go on strike, he treats them as
other corporations treat their strikers. And all newspaper corporations
do the same. I could name not one, but several cities in which
newspapers have hired thugs to break the strikes of newsboys; or where
they have hired strikes against their rivals. During the Colorado
coal-strike the “Denver Express” was publishing the truth about the
strike, and the other newspapers organized a boycott of the dealers who
handled the “Express.” When the “Express” hired its own newsboys,
mysterious gangs of rowdies appeared, and beat up these newsboys and
scattered their papers in the streets. And no interference from the
police, no line about these riots in any Denver newspaper—except the
“Express,” which could not get distributed!
Wherever you dig in the cellars of these great predatory institutions,
you find buried skeletons. I have dragged some of them into the light of
day; I would drag others—but the test here is not what I know to be
true, but what I can prove in a court of law. And it is so easy for a
great newspaper to buy witnesses; so easy for a great newspaper to
terrorize witnesses! I came upon one typical story that I could prove,
and prove to the hilt; I prepared to tell the story, with names and
places and dates, but while I was collecting the evidence, a friend of
the victim exclaimed: “You will ruin him! You will set the newspaper
after him again!”
This man, a former city official, an honest public servant, had been
deliberately ruined by a newspaper conspiracy, and brought to utter
despair. The thing happened six years ago, and only now is he beginning
to recover his practice as a lawyer. If now I revive this story, he will
take up his morning paper and read something like this: “The defendant
was represented by John Jones, who a few years ago was indicted—etc.”
Or: “The striking carpenters have retained John Jones, who was once city
prosecutor, and concerning whom several witnesses testified—etc., etc.”
Shall I inflict this upon a man, in spite of his wishes? I thought the
matter over from many angles, and decided to ask the reader to accept
the story on my word. Really, it is too incredible a story to be an
invention! Listen:
John Jones, city prosecutor, caused the arrest of the proprietor of a
great and powerful newspaper for printing salacious advertisements. He
forced this newspaper to make abject public apology, and to promise
reform. Later he caused the arrest of the proprietor for criminal libel;
whereupon this proprietor set out to “get” the city prosecutor. The
paper had a “literary editor,” a man who has since become well-known as
a critic and novelist, author of perhaps a dozen books. At this time his
salary was thirty dollars a week, and he was told by the proprietor of
the newspaper to go and “get” John Jones, using either wine or women.
A woman was brought on from the Middle West, a woman just one month
under twenty-one, which is the “age of consent” in the state in
question. This woman sought a city position from John Jones, came to his
office, threw her arms about his neck, and screamed. Instantly the door
was broken in, and it was made known that “sleuths” had bored a hole
through the office-wall, and were prepared to testify that they had seen
John Jones committing a crime with this woman under age.
Now, I hear you say, with a knowing smile, “That’s the story John Jones
tells!” No, reader, I assure you I am not so naïve; I did not get this
story from John Jones, I did not get it from any friend of John Jones.
It happens that I know the “literary editor” fairly well, and I know a
dozen of his friends. To one of these, an intimate friend of mine, this
“literary editor” told the entire story. Two friends of mine were
present at a club dinner, when the man was confronted by accident with
his victim, and admitted what he had done, and begged pardon for it. It
was his “job,” he said—his “job” of thirty dollars a week! And that is
how I came on the story!
I go over in my mind the newspapers concerning which I can make the
statement that I know, either from direct personal knowledge, or from
the evidence of a friend whom I trust, that the owner or manager of this
paper has committed a definite act of crime for which, if the laws were
enforced, the owner or manager would be sent to the penitentiary. I
count a total of fifteen such papers, located in leading American
cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco,
Los Angeles. Each one of these criminals sits in a seat of power and
poisons the thinking of hundreds of thousands of helpless people. I ask
myself: In what respect is the position of these people different from
that of the peasantry of mediaeval Germany, who lived and labored
subject to raids from robber knights and barons whose castles they saw
upon distant cliffs and mountain tops?