THE INTERACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION WITH THE FORCES THAT HELP TO MAKE IT
The public and the press, or for that matter, the public and any force
that modifies public opinion, interact. Action and interaction are
continually going on between the forces projected out to the public
and the public itself. The public relations counsel must understand
this fact in its broadest and most detailed implications. He must
understand not only what these various forces are, but he must be able
to evaluate their relative powers with fair accuracy. Let us consider
again the case of a newspaper, as representative of other mediums of
communication.
“We print,” says the _New York Times_, “all the news that’s fit to
print.” Immediately the question arises (as Elmer Davis, the historian
of the _Times_ tells us that it did when the motto was first adopted)
what news _is_ fit to print? By what standard is the editorial decision
reached which includes one kind of news and excludes another kind? The
_Times_ itself has not been, in its long and conspicuously successful
career, entirely free from difficulties on this point.
Thus in “The History of The _New York Times_,” Mr. Davis feels the
need for justifying the extent to which that paper featured Theodore
Tilton’s action against the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher for alienation
of Mrs. Tilton’s affections and his conduct with her. Mr. Davis says
(pages 124-125): “No doubt a good many readers of the _Times_ thought
that the paper was giving an undue amount of space to this chronicle
of sin and suffering. Those complaints come in often enough even in
these days from readers who appreciate the paper’s general reluctance
to display news of this sort, and wonder why a good general rule
should occasionally be violated. But there was a reason in the Beecher
case, as there has usually been a reason in similar affairs since.
Dr. Beecher was one of the most prominent clergymen in the country;
there was a natural curiosity as to whether he was practicing what
he preached. One of the counsel at the trial declared that ‘all
Christendom was hanging on its outcome.’ Full reporting of its course
was not a mere pandering to vulgar curiosity, but a recognition of the
value of the case as news.”
The simple fact that such a slogan can exist and be accepted is for
our purpose an important point. Somewhere there must be a standard
to which the editors of the _Times_ can conform, as well as a large
clientele of constant readers to whom that standard is satisfactory.
“Fit” must be defined by the editors of the _Times_ in a way which
meets with the approval of enough persons to enable the paper to
maintain its reading public. As soon, however, as the definition is
attempted, difficulties arise.
Professor W. G. Bleyer, in an article in his book on journalism,
first stresses the importance of completeness in the news columns of
a paper, then goes on to say that “the only important limitations
to completeness are those imposed by the commonly accepted ideas of
decency embodied in the words, ‘All the news that’s fit to print’ and
by the rights of privacy. Carefully edited newspapers discriminate
between what the public is entitled to know and what an individual has
a right to keep private.”
On the other hand, when Professor Bleyer attempts to define what
news is fit to print and what the public is entitled to know, he
discusses generalizations capable of wide and frequently inconsistent
interpretation. “News,” says he, “is anything timely which is
significant to newspaper readers in their relations to the community,
the state and the nation.”
Who is to determine what is significant and what is not? Who is
to decide which of the individual’s relations to the community
are safeguarded by his right of privacy and which are not? Such a
definition tells us nothing more definite than does the slogan which it
attempts to define. We must look further for a standard by which these
definitions are applied. There must be a consensus of public opinion on
which the newspaper falls back for its standards.
The truth is that while it appears to be forming the public opinion on
fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it.
It is the office of the public relations counsel to determine the
interaction between the public, and the press and the other mediums
affecting public opinion. It is as important to conform to the
standards of the organ which projects ideas as it is to present to
this organ such ideas as will conform to the fundamental understanding
and appreciation of the public to which they are ultimately to appeal.
There is as much truth in the proposition that the public leads
institutions as in the contrary proposition that the institutions lead
the public.
As an illustration of the manner in which newspapers are inclined to
accept the judgments of their readers in presenting material to them,
we have this anecdote which Rollo Ogden tells in the _Atlantic Monthly_
for July, 1906, about a letter which Wendell Phillips wished to have
published in a Boston paper.
“The editor read it over, and said, ‘Mr. Phillips, that is a very good
and interesting letter, and I shall be glad to publish it; but I wish
you would consent to strike out the last paragraph.’
“‘Why,’ said Phillips, ‘that paragraph is the precise thing for which I
wrote the whole letter. Without that it would be pointless.’
“‘Oh, I see that,’ replied the editor; ‘and what you say is perfectly
true! I fully agree with it all myself. Yet it is one of those things
which it will not do to say publicly. However, if you insist upon it, I
will publish it as it stands.’
“It was published the next morning, and along with it a short editorial
reference to it, saying that a letter from Mr. Phillips would be found
in another column, and that it was extraordinary that so keen a mind
as his should have fallen into the palpable absurdity contained in the
last paragraph.”
Recognition of this fact comes from a number of different sources.
H. L. Mencken recognizes that the public runs the press as much as the
press runs the public.
“The primary aim of all of them,” says Mr. Mencken,[8] “not less
when they play the secular Iokanaan than when they play the mere
newsmonger, was to please the crowd, and to give a good show; and the
way they set about giving that good show was by first selecting a
deserving victim, and then putting him magnificently to the torture.
“This was their method when they were performing for their own profit
only, when their one motive was to make the public read their paper;
but it was still their motive when they were battling bravely and
unselfishly for the public good, and so discharging the highest duty of
their profession.”
There are interesting, if somewhat obscure, examples of the
complementary working of various forces. In the field of the motion
pictures, for example, the producers, the actors and the press, in
their support, have continually waged a battle against censorship.
Undoubtedly censorship of the motion pictures is in its practical
workings an economic and artistic handicap. Censorship, however, will
continue in spite of the producers as long as there is a willingness on
the part of the public to accept this censorship. The public, on the
whole, has refused to join the fight against censorship, because there
is a more or less articulate belief that children, if not women, should
be protected from seeing shocking sights, such as murders visibly
enacted, the taking of drugs, immoralities and other acts which might
offend or suggest harmful imitation.
“Damaged Goods,” before its presentation to America in 1913, was
analyzed by the public relations counsel, who helped to produce the
play. He recognized that unless that part of the public sentiment which
believed in education and truth could be lifted from that part of
public opinion which condemned the mentioning of sex matters, “Damaged
Goods” would fail. The producers, therefore, did not try to educate the
public by presenting this play as such, but allowed group leaders and
groups interested in education to come to the support of Brieux’s drama
and, in a sense, to sponsor the production.
Proof that the public and the institutions that make public opinion
interact is shown in instances in which books were stifled because of
popular disapproval at one time and then brought forward by popular
demand at a later time when public opinion had altered. Religious and
very early scientific works are among such books.
A more recent instance is the announcement made by _Judge_, a weekly
magazine, that it would support the fight for light wine and beer.
_Judge_ took this stand because it believed in the principle of
personal freedom and also because it deemed that public sentiment
was in favor of light wine and beer as a substitute for absolute
prohibition. _Judge_ believed its stand would please its readers.
Presumably writing of newspaper morality, Mr. Mencken, in his article
just quoted, finds at the end of it that he has “written of popular
morality very copiously, and of newspaper morality very little.
“But,” says Mr. Mencken, “as I have said before, the one is the other.
The newspaper must adapt its pleading to its clients’ moral limitation
just as the trial lawyer also must adapt _his_ pleading to the jury’s
limitations. Neither may like the job, but both must face it to gain
the larger end.”
Writing on the other hand from the point of view of the man who feels
that the public taste requires no justification, Ralph Pulitzer
nevertheless agrees with Mr. Mencken that the opinion of the press
is set by the public; and he justifies “muckraking”[9] by finding it
neither “extraordinary nor culpable that people and press should be
more interested in the polemical than in the platitudinous; in blame
than in painting the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory coals to
Newcastle.”
Even Mr. Leupp[10] concludes that “whatever we may say of the modern
press on its less commendable side, we are bound to admit that
newspapers, like governments, fairly reflect the people they serve.
Charles Dudley Warner once went so far as to say that no matter how
objectionable the character of a paper may be, it is always a trifle
better than the patrons on whom it relies for its support.”
Similarly, from an unusually wide experience on a paper as highly
considered, perhaps, as any in America, Rollo Ogden claims this give
and take between the public and the press is vital to a just conception
of American journalism.
“The editor does not nonchalantly project his thoughts into the void.
He listens for the echo of his words. His relation to his supporters is
not unlike Gladstone’s definition of the intimate connection between
the orator and his audience. As the speaker gets from his hearers in
mist what he gives back in shower, so the newspaper receives from the
public as well as gives to it. Too often it gets as dust what it gives
back as mud; but that does not alter the relation. Action and reaction
are all the while going on between the press and its patrons. Hence it
follows that the responsibility for the more crying evils of journalism
must be divided.”[11]
The same interaction goes on in connection with all the other forces
that mould public opinion. The preacher upholds the ideals of society.
He leads his flock whither they indicate a willingness to be led. Ibsen
creates a revolution when society is ripe for it. The public responds
to finer music and better motion pictures and demands improvements.
“Give the people what they want” is only half sound. What they want
and what they get are fused by some mysterious alchemy. The press, the
lecturer, the screen and the public lead and are led by each other.