IS PUBLIC OPINION STUBBORN OR MALLEABLE?
There is a divergence of opinion as to whether the public mind is
malleable or stubborn--whether it is a passive or an active element.
On the one hand is the profound belief that “you can’t change human
nature.” On the other hand is the equally firm assurance that certain
well-defined institutions modify and alter public opinion.
There is a uniformity of opinion in this country upon many issues.
When this uniformity accords with our own beliefs we call it an
expression of the public conscience. When, however, it runs contrary
to our beliefs we call it the regimentation of the public mind and are
inclined to ascribe it to insidious propaganda.
Uniformity is, in fact, largely natural and only partly artificial.
Public opinion may be as much the producer of “insidious propaganda”
as its product. Naturally enough, where broad ideas are involved,
criticisms of the state of the public’s mind and of its origin come
most frequently from groups that are out of sympathy with the accepted
point of view. They find the public unreceptive to their point of
view, and justly or unjustly they attribute this to the influence of
antagonistic interests upon the public mind.
These groups see the press, the lecture platform, the schools, the
advertisements, the churches, the radio, the motion picture screen,
the magazines daily reaching millions. They see that the preponderant
point of view in most, if not all, these institutions conforms to the
preponderant state of mind of the public.
They argue from the one to the other and reach their conclusions
without much difficulty. They do not stop to think that agreement in
point of view between the public and these institutions may often be
the result of the control exercised by the public mind over these
institutions.
Many outside forces, however, do go to influence public opinion. The
most obvious of these forces are parental influence, the school room,
the press, motion pictures, advertising, magazines, lectures, the
church, the radio.
To answer the question as to the stubbornness or malleability of the
public, let us analyze the press in its relation to public opinion,
since the press stands preëminent among the various institutions which
are commonly designated as leaders or moulders of the public mind. By
the press, in this instance, I mean the daily press. Americans are
a newspaper-reading public. They have become accustomed to look to
their morning and evening papers for the news of the world and for
the opinions of their leaders. And while the individual newspaper
reader does not give a very considerable portion of his day to this
occupation, many persons find time to read more than one newspaper
every day.
It is not surprising that the man who is outside the current of
prevailing public opinion should regard the daily press as a coercive
force.
Discussions of the public’s reaction to the press are two-sided, just
as are discussions of the influence of the pulpit or other forces.
Some authorities hold that the public mind is stubborn in regard to
the press and that the press has little influence upon it. There are
graphic instances of the stubbornness of the public point of view.
A most interesting example is the reëlection of Mayor Hylan of New
York by an overwhelming majority in the face of the opposition of all
but two of the metropolitan dailies. It is also noteworthy that in
1909, Gaynor was elected Mayor of New York with every paper except
one opposing his candidacy. Likewise, Mayor Mitchel of New York was
defeated for reëlection in 1917, although all the New York papers
except two Hearst papers and the _New York Call_ supported him. In
Boston, in a recent election, a man was elected as mayor who had
been convicted of a penal offense, and elected in the face of the
practically united opposition of all the newspapers of that city.
How would such authors as Everett Dean Martin, Walter Lippmann and
Upton Sinclair explain these incidents? How, on the theory of the
regimentation of the public mind by the daily press, can such thinkers
explain the sharpness with which the public sometimes rejects the
advocacies of a united press? These instances are not frequent; but
they show that other influences beside the press enter into the making
of a public opinion and that these forces must never be disregarded in
the estimate of the quality and stability of a prevalent public opinion.
Francis E. Leupp, writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February,
1910, on “The Waning Power of the Press,” remarks that Mayor Gaynor’s
comments shortly after his election in 1909 “led up to the conclusion
that in our common sense generation nobody cares what the newspapers
say.” Mr. Leupp continues: “Unflattering as such a verdict may be,
probably the majority of a community if polled as a jury would concur
in it. The airy dismissal of some proposition as ‘mere newspaper talk’
is heard at every social gathering until one who is brought up to
regard the press as a mighty factor in modern civilization is tempted
to wonder whether it has actually lost the power it used to wield among
us.”
And H. L. Mencken, writing in the same magazine for March, 1914,
declares that “one of the principal marks of an educated man, indeed,
is the fact that he does _not_ take his opinions from newspapers--not,
at any rate, from the militant, crusading newspapers. On the contrary,
his attitude toward them is almost always one of frank cynicism, with
indifference as its mildest form and contempt as its commonest. He
knows that they are constantly falling into false reasoning about the
things within his personal knowledge,--that is, within the narrow
circle of his special education,--and so he assumes that they make the
same, or even worse, errors about other things, whether intellectual or
moral. This assumption, it may be said at once, is quite justified by
the facts.”
The second point of view holds that the daily press and the other
leading forces merely accept, reflect and intensify established public
opinion and are, therefore, responsible for the uniformity of public
reaction. A vivid statement of the point of view of the man who
typifies this group is found in Everett Dean Martin’s volume on “The
Behavior of Crowds.” He says:[6] “The modern man has in the printing
press a wonderfully effective means for perpetuating crowd-movements
and keeping great masses of people constantly under the sway of certain
crowd-ideas. Every crowd-group has its magazines, press agents, and
special ‘literature’ with which it continually harangues its members
and possible converts. Many books, and especially certain works of
fiction of the ‘best seller’ type, are clearly reading mob phenomena.”
There is a third group which perhaps comes nearer the truth,
which holds that the press, just as other mediums of education or
dissemination, brings about a very definite change in public opinion.
A most graphic illustration of what such mediums can do to change
opinions upon fundamental and important matters is the woman suffrage
question and its victory over established points of view. The press,
the pulpit, the lecture platform, the motion pictures and the other
mediums for reaching the public brought about a complete popular
conversion. Other examples of the change that may be brought about in
public opinion in this way, by such institutions of authority, is the
present attitude towards birth control and towards health education.
Naturally the press, like other institutions which present facts or
opinions, is restricted, often unconsciously, sometimes consciously, by
various controlling conditions. Certain people talk of the censorship
enacted by the prejudices and predispositions of the public itself.
Some, such as Upton Sinclair, ascribe to the advertisers a conscious
and powerful control of publications. Others, like Walter Lippmann,
find that an effective barrier between the public and the event exists
in the powerful influence which, he says, is exerted in certain cases
on the press by the so-called quality public which the newspapers’
advertisers wish to reach and among whom the newspapers must circulate
if the advertising is to be successful. Mr. Lippmann observes that
although such a restriction may exist, much of what may be attributed
to censorship in the newspaper, often is actually inadequate
presentation of the events it seeks to describe.
On this point he says:[7] “It follows that in the reporting of strikes,
the easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the overt act, and
to describe the event as the story of interference with the reader’s
life. This is where his attention is first aroused and his interest
most easily enlisted. A great deal, I think myself, of the crucial
part of what looks to the worker and the reformer as deliberate
misrepresentation on the part of newspapers, is the direct outcome
of a practical difficulty in uncovering the news, and the emotional
difficulty of making distinct facts interesting unless, as Emerson
says, we can ‘perceive’ (them) and can ‘set about translating (them) at
once into parallel facts.’”
In view then of the possibility of a malleable public opinion the
counsel on public relations, desiring to obtain a hearing for any given
cause, simply utilizes existent channels to obtain expression for the
point of view he represents. How this is done will be considered later.
Because of the importance of channels of thought communication, it
is vital for the public relations counsel to study carefully the
relationship between public opinion and the organs that maintain it or
that influence it to change. We shall look into this interaction and
its effect in the next chapter.