of its average reader; if we could imagine an issue of the _Standard_,
or the _Daily Chronicle_, or the _Scotsman_ metamorphosed into human
form, we should probably have to admit that the being thus created was
rather above the average man in taste, intelligence, and good feeling.
Speaking roughly, and making allowances for all obvious exceptions, I
should be inclined to say that a similar statement would not be as
universally true of the American paper and the American public,
particularly if the female citizen were included under the latter
head. If the intelligent foreigner were to regard the British citizen
as practically an incarnation of his daily press, whether metropolitan
or provincial, he would be doing him more than justice; if he were to
apply the same standard to the American press and the American
citizen, it would not be the latter who would profit by the
assumption. The American paper represents a distinctly lower level of
life than the English one; it would often seem as if the one catered
for the least intelligent class of its readers, while the other
assumed a standard higher than most of its readers could reach. The
cultivated American is certainly not so slangy as the paper he reads;
he is certainly not keenly interested in the extremely silly social
items of which it contains several columns. Such journals as the New
York _Evening Post_ and the Springfield _Republican_ are undoubtedly
worthy of mention alongside of our most reputable dailies; but
journals of their admirably high standard are comparatively rare, and
no cultivated English visitor to the United States can have been
spared a shock at the contrast between his fastidious and gentlemanly
host and the general tone of the sheet served up with the matutinal
hot cakes, or read by him on the cars and at the club.
Various causes may be suggested for this state of affairs. For one
thing, the mass of half-educated people in the United States--people
intelligent enough to take a lively interest in all that pertains to
humanity, but not trained enough to insist on literary _form_--is so
immense as practically to swamp the cultivated class and render it a
comparatively unimportant object for the business-like editor. In
England a standard of taste has been gradually evolved, which is
insisted on by the educated class and largely taken on authority by
others. In America practically no such standard is recognised; no one
there would continue to take in a paper he found dull because the
squire and the parson subscribed for it. The American reader--even
when himself of high education and refinement--is a much less
responsible being than the Englishman, and will content himself with a
shrug of his shoulders where the latter would write a letter of
indignant protest to the editor. I have more than once asked an
American friend how he could endure such a daily repast of pointless
vulgarity, slipshod English, and general second-rateness; but elicited
no better answer than that one had to see the news, that the
editorial part of the paper was well done, and that a man had to make
the best of what existed. This is a national trait; it has simply to
be recognised as such. Perhaps the fact that there is no metropolitan
press in America to give tone to the rest of the country may also
count for something in this connection. The press of Washington, the
political capital, is distinctly provincial; and the New York papers,
though practically representative of the United States for the outside
world, can hardly be said to play a genuinely metropolitan rôle within
the country itself.
The principal characteristics of American journalism may be summed up
in the word "enterprise." No one on earth is more fertile in
expedients than an American editor, kept constantly to the collar by a
sense of competing energies all around him. No trouble, or expense, or
contrivance is spared in the collection of news; scarcely any item of
interest is overlooked by the army of alert reporters day and night in
the field. The old-world papers do not compete with those of the new
in the matter of _quantity_ of news. But just here comes in one of the
chief faults of the American journal, one of the besetting sins of the
American people,--their well-known love of "bigness," their tendency
to ask "How much?" rather than "Of what kind?" There is a lack of
discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American
press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is
only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is
only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal
prize-fights or vapid "personals" as by important political
information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modicum of
truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly
supply news enough--but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as
if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able
editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter
in Denmark, the proportion is exactly reversed in the United States.
The net of the ordinary American editor is at least as indiscriminating
as that of the German historiographer: every detail is swept in,
irrespective of its intrinsic value. The very end for which the
newspaper avowedly exists is often defeated by the impossibility of
finding out what is the important news of the day. The reporter prides
himself on being able to "write up" the most intrinsically
uninteresting and unimportant matter. The best American critics
themselves agree on this point. Mr. Howells writes: "There are too
many things brought together in which the reader can and should have
no interest. The thousand and one petty incidents of the various
casualties of life that are grouped together in newspaper columns are
profitless expenditure of money and energy."
The culminating point of this aimless congeries of reading matter,
good, bad, and indifferent, is attained in the Sunday editions of the
larger papers. Nothing comes amiss to their endless columns: scandal,
politics, crochet-patterns, bogus interviews, puerile hoaxes, highly
seasoned police reports, exaggerations of every kind, records of
miraculous cures, funny stories with comic cuts, society paragraphs,
gossip about foreign royalties, personalities of every description. In
fact, they form the very ragbag of journalism. An unreasonable pride
is taken in their very bulk--as if forty pages _per se_ were better
than one; as if the tons of garbage in the Sunday issue of the Gotham
_Gasometer_ outweighed in any valuable sense the ten or twelve small
pages of the Parisian _Temps_. Not but that there is a great deal of
good matter in the Sunday papers. _Wer vieles bringt wird manchem
etwas bringen_; and he who knows where to look for it will generally
find some edible morsel in the hog-trough. It has been claimed that
the Sunday papers of America correspond with the cheaper English
magazines; and doubtless there is some truth in the assertion. The
pretty little tale, the interesting note of popular science, or the
able sketch of some contemporary political condition is, however, so
hidden away amid a mass of feebly illustrated and vulgarly written
notes on sport, society, criminal reports, and personal interviews
with the most evanescent of celebrities that one cannot but stand
aghast at this terrible misuse of the powerful engine of the press. It
is idle to contend that the newspaper, as a business undertaking, must
supply this sort of thing to meet the demand for it. It is (or ought
to be) the proud boast of the press that it leads and moulds public
opinion, and undoubtedly journalism (like the theatre) is at least as
much the cause as the effect of the depravity of public taste.
Enterprising stage-managers have before now proved that Shakespeare
does _not_ spell ruin, and there are admirable journals in the United
States which have shown themselves to be valuable properties without
undue pandering to the frivolous or vicious side of the public
instinct.[17]
A straw shows how the wind blows; let one item show the unfathomable
gulf in questions of tone and taste that can subsist between a great
American daily and its English counterparts. In the summer of 1895 an
issue of one of the richest and most influential of American
journals--a paper that such men as Mr. Cleveland and Mr. McKinley have
to take account of--published under the heading "A Fortunate Find" a
picture of two girls in bathing dress, talking by the edge of the sea.
One says to the other: "How did you manage your father? I thought he
wouldn't let you come?" The answer is: "I caught him kissing the
typewriter." It is, of course, perfectly inconceivable that any
reputable British daily could descend to this depth of purposeless and
odious vulgarity. If this be the style of humour desiderated, the
Thunderer may take as a well-earned compliment the American sneer that
"no joke appears in the London _Times_, save by accident." If another
instance be wanted, take this: Major Calef, of Boston, officiated as
marshal at the funeral of his friend, Gen. Francis Walker. In so doing
he caught a cold, of which he died. An evening paper hereupon
published a cartoon showing Major Calef walking arm in arm with Death
at General Walker's funeral.
Americans are also apt to be proud of the number of their journals,
and will tell you, with evident appreciation of the fact, that "nearly
two thousand daily papers and fourteen thousand weeklies are published
in the United States." Unfortunately the character of their local
journals does not altogether warrant the inference as to American
intelligence that you are expected to draw. Many of them consist
largely of paragraphs such as the following, copied verbatim from an
issue of the Plattsburg _Sentinel_ (September, 1888):
George Blanshard, of Champlain, an experienced prescription clerk
and a graduate of the Albany School of Pharmacy, has accepted a
position in Breed's drug-store at Malone.
Clerk Whitcomb, of the steamer "Maquam," has finished his
season's work in the boat, and has resumed his studies at
Burlington.
I admit that the interest of the readers of the _Sentinel_ in the
doings of their friends Mr. Blanshard and Mr. Whitcomb is, perhaps,
saner and healthier than that of the British snob in the fact that
"Prince and Princess Christian walked in the gardens of Windsor Castle
and afterwards drove out for an airing." But that is the utmost that
can be said for the propagation of such utter vapidities; and the man
who pays his five cents for the privilege of reading them can scarcely
be said to produce a certificate of intelligence in so doing. If the
exhibition of such intellectual feebleness were the worst charge that
could be brought against the American newspaper, there would be little
more to say; but, alas, "there are some among the so-called leading
newspapers of which the influence is wholly pernicious because of the
perverted intellectual ability with which they are conducted." (Prof.
Chas. E. Norton, in the _Forum_, February, 1896.)
The levity with which many--perhaps most--American journals treat
subjects of serious importance is another unpleasant feature. They
will talk of divorces as "matrimonial smash-ups," or enumerate them
under the caption "Divorce Mill." Murders and fatal accidents are
recorded with the same jocosity. Questions of international importance
are handled as if the main purpose of the article was to show the
writer's power of humour. Serious speeches and even sermons are
reported in a vein of flippant jocularity. The same trait often
obtrudes into the review of books of the first importance. The
traditional "No case--abuse the plaintiff's attorney" is translated
into "Can't understand or appreciate this--let's make fun of it."
By the best papers--and these are steadily multiplying--the
"interview" is looked upon as a serious opportunity to obtain in a
concise form the views of a person of greater or less eminence on
subjects of which he is entitled to speak with authority. By the
majority of journals, however, the interview is abused to an
inordinate extent, both as regards the individual and the public. It
is used as a vehicle for the cheapest forms of wit and the most
personal attack or laudation. My own experience was that the
interviewer put a series of pre-arranged questions to me, published
those of my answers which met his own preconceptions, and invented
appropriate substitutes for those he did not honour with his approval.
A Chicago reporter made me say that English ignorance of America was
so dense that "a gentleman of considerable attainments asked me if
Connecticut was not the capital of Pittsburgh and notable for its
great Mormon temple,"--an elaborate combination due solely to his own
active brain. The same ingenuous (and ingenious) youth caused me to
invent "an erratic young Londoner, who packed his bag and started at
once for any out-of-the-way country for which a new guide-book was
published." Another, with equal lack of ground, committed me to the
unpatriotic assertion that neither in Great Britain nor in any other
part of Europe was there any scenery to compare with that of the
United States. But perhaps the unkindest cut of all was that of the
reporter at Washington who made me introduce my remarks by the fatuous
expression "Methought"! Mr. E.A. Freeman was much amused by a reporter
who said of him: "When he don't know a thing, he says he don't. When
he does, he speaks as if he were certain of it." Mr. Freeman adds: "To
the interviewer this way of action seemed a little strange, though he
clearly approved of the eccentricity." This gentleman's mental
attitude, like his superiority to grammar, is, unfortunately,
characteristic of hundreds of his colleagues on the American press.
The distinction between the editorial and reportorial functions of a
newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States
than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself
strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative
speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in
a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism
is reserved for the editorial columns. This is by no means the case in
America. Such an authority as the _Atlantic Monthly_ admits that
wilful distortion is not infrequent: the reporter seems to consider it
as part of his duty to amend the record in the interest of his own
paper or party. The American reporter, in a word, may be more
active-minded, more original, more amusing, than his English
colleague; but he is seldom so accurate. This want of impartiality is
another of the patent defects of the American daily press. It is a too
unscrupulous partisan; it represents the ethics of the ward politician
rather than the seeker after truth.
If restraint be a sign of power, then the American press is weak
indeed. There is no reticence about it. Nothing is sacred to an
American reporter; everything that can be in any sense regarded as an
item of news is exposed to the full glare of publicity. It has come to
be so widely taken for granted that one likes to see his name in the
papers, that it is often difficult to make a lady or gentleman of the
American press understand that you really prefer to have your family
affairs left in the dusk of private life. The touching little story
entitled "A Thanksgiving Breakfast," in _Harper's Magazine_ for
November, 1895, records an experience that is almost a commonplace
except as regards the unusually thin skin of the victim and the
unusual delicacy and good feeling of the operator. The writer of an
interesting article in the _Outlook_ (April 25, 1896), an admirable
weekly paper published in New York, sums it up in a sentence: "It is
no exaggeration to say that the wanton and unrestricted invasion of
privacy by the modern press constitutes in certain respects the most
offensive form of tyranny which the world has ever known." The writer
then narrates the following incident to illustrate the length to which
this invasion of domestic privacy is carried:
A cultivated and refined woman living in a boarding-house was so
unfortunate as to awaken the admiration of a young man of
unbalanced mind who was living under the same roof. He paid her
attentions which were courteously but firmly declined. He wrote
her letters which were at first acknowledged in the most formal
way, and finally ignored. No woman could have been more
circumspect and dignified. The young man preserved copies of his
own letters, introduced the two or three brief and formal notes
which he had received in reply, made a story of the incident,
stole the photograph of the woman, enclosed his own photograph,
mailed the whole matter to a New York newspaper, and committed
suicide. The result was a two or three column report of the
incident, with portraits of the unfortunate woman and the
suicide, and an elaborate and startling exaggeration of the few
inconspicuous, insignificant, and colorless facts from which the
narrative was elaborated. That a refined woman in American
society should be exposed to such a brutal invasion of her
privacy as that which was committed in this case reflects upon
every gentleman in the country.
No doubt, as the _Outlook_ goes on to show, the American people are
themselves largely responsible for this attitude of the press. They
have as a whole not only less reverence than Europeans for the privacy
of others, but also less resentment for the violation of their own
privacy. The new democracy has resigned itself to the custom of living
in glass houses and regards the desire to shroud one's personal life
in mystery as one of the survivals of the dark ages. The newspaper
personalities are largely "the result of the desperate desire of the
new classes, to whom democratic institutions have given their first
chance, to discover the way to _live_, in the wide social meaning of
the word."
One regrettable result of the way in which the American papers turn
liberty into license is that it actually deters many people from
taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is
sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation,
together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate
affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading
journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men.
One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as "a wretched,
rattle-pated boy." Others constantly alluded to Mr. Cleveland as "His
Corpulency." For weeks the New York _Sun_ published a portrait of
President Hayes with the word FRAUD printed across the forehead.
Such competent observers as Mr. George W. Smalley (_Harper's
Magazine_, July, 1898) bear testimony to the fact that the
irresponsibility of the press has seriously diminished its influence
for good. Thus he points out that "the combined and active support
given by the American press to the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty
weighed as nothing with the Senate." In recent mayoralty contests in
New York and in Boston, almost the whole of the local press carried on
vigorous but futile campaigns against the successful candidates.
Several public libraries and reading-rooms have actually put some of
the leading journals in an Index Expurgatorius.[18]
The moral and intellectual defects of the American newspaper are
reflected in its outward dress. Neither the paper nor the printing of
a New York or Boston daily paper is so good as that of the great
English dailies. American editors are apt to claim a good deal of
credit for the illustrations with which the pages of their journals
are sprinkled; but a less justifiable claim for approbation was surely
never filed. In nine cases out of ten the wood-cuts in an American
paper are an insult to one's good taste and sense of propriety, and,
indeed, form one of the chief reasons for classing the American daily
press as distinctly lower than that of England. The reason of this
physical inferiority I do not pretend to explain. It is, however, a
strange phenomenon in a country which produces the most beautiful
monthly magazines in the world, and also holds its own in the paper,
printing, and binding of its books. But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the
magazines and books of England and America are merely varieties of the
same species, while the daily journals of the two countries belong to
totally different orders. Many of the better papers are now beginning
to give up illustrations. A bill to prevent the insertion in
newspapers of portraits without the consent of the portrayed was even
brought before the New York Legislature. An exasperating feature of
American newspapers, which seems to me to come also under the head of
physical inferiority, is the practice of scattering an article over
the whole of an issue. Thus, on reaching the foot of a column on page
1 we are more likely than not to be directed for its continuation on
page 7 or 8. The reason of this is presumably the desire to have all
the best goods in the window; _i.e._, all the most important
head-lines on the front page; but the custom is a most annoying one to
the reader.
It is frequently asserted by Americans that their press is very
largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often
venal. On such points as these I venture to make no assertion. To
prove them would require either a special knowledge of the
back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the
working of American institutions and the evolution of American
character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation
can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and
attitude. I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs
may read. It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of
the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement
seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English
press.
So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high
character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and
exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a class seem to me
distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain. But I believe
this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two
countries would alone warrant the inference. The trail of the reporter
is over them all. Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of
the passage of a needle's eye by a camel, believe it impossible for
reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a
reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy
of respect for the mental privacy of others which we associate with
the idea of true gentlemanliness. Mr. Smalley, in a passage
controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always
begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admits that a modern reporter
has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to
reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession.
The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and
clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his
academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address.
This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American
journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of
men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting,
and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period
of their career, of associating with the best-mannered men of the
time. It is, of course, highly honourable to American society and to
themselves that they have and take the opportunity of advancement, but
the fact remains patent in their slipshod style and the faulty grammar
of their writings, and in their vulgar familiarity of manner. It has
been asserted that journalism in America is not a profession, and is
"subject to none of the conditions that would entitle it to the name.
There are no recognised rules of conduct for its members, and no
tribunal to enforce them if there were."