There is a great deal of protest made from one quarter or another
nowadays against the influence of that new journalism which is
associated with the names of Sir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson. But
almost everybody who attacks it attacks on the ground that it is very
sensational, very violent and vulgar and startling. I am speaking in no
affected contrariety, but in the simplicity of a genuine personal
impression, when I say that this journalism offends as being not
sensational or violent enough. The real vice is not that it is
startling, but that it is quite insupportably tame. The whole object is
to keep carefully along a certain level of the expected and the
commonplace; it may be low, but it must take care also to be flat.
Never by any chance in it is there any of that real plebeian pungency
which can be heard from the ordinary cabman in the ordinary street. We
have heard of a certain standard of decorum which demands that things
should be funny without being vulgar, but the standard of this decorum
demands that if things are vulgar they shall be vulgar without being
funny. This journalism does not merely fail to exaggerate life—it
positively underrates it; and it has to do so because it is intended
for the faint and languid recreation of men whom the fierceness of
modern life has fatigued. This press is not the yellow press at all; it
is the drab press. Sir Alfred Harmsworth must not address to the tired
clerk any observation more witty than the tired clerk might be able to
address to Sir Alfred Harmsworth. It must not expose anybody (anybody
who is powerful, that is), it must not offend anybody, it must not even
please anybody, too much. A general vague idea that in spite of all
this, our yellow press is sensational, arises from such external
accidents as large type or lurid headlines. It is quite true that these
editors print everything they possibly can in large capital letters.
But they do this, not because it is startling, but because it is
soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted
train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in
this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in
dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents
and governesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to
spell. The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as a horseshoe in
order to make the child jump; on the contrary, they use it to put the
child at his ease, to make things smoother and more evident. Of the
same character is the dim and quiet dame school which Sir Alfred
Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson keep. All their sentiments are
spelling-book sentiments—that is to say, they are sentiments with
which the pupil is already respectfully familiar. All their wildest
posters are leaves torn from a copy-book.
Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in Ireland, and
in America, we have no trace in this country. When a journalist in
Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he creates a thrill worth talking
about. He denounces a leading Irish member for corruption, or he
charges the whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy.
When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson; he
discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered
three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as
this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the
same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they
can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version
of the massacre of the envoys of Pekin was mendacious, but it was not
interesting, except to those who had private reasons for terror or
sorrow. It was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of the
Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be
impressive except a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of which
I happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when
it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the
most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you
make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable
that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no
moral courage or immoral courage; their whole method consists in
saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody
else says casually, and without remembering what they have said. When
they brace themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the point
of attacking anything which is large and real, and would resound with
the shock. They do not attack the army as men do in France, or the
judges as men do in Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in
England a hundred years ago. They attack something like the War
Office—something, that is, which everybody attacks and nobody bothers
to defend, something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers.
Just as a man shows he has a weak voice by straining it to shout, so
they show the hopelessly unsensational nature of their minds when they
really try to be sensational. With the whole world full of big and
dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring
them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the
War Office. They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or
form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law. Nor
is it only from the point of view of particular amateurs of the
sensational such as myself, that it is permissible to say, in the words
of Cowper’s Alexander Selkirk, that “their tameness is shocking to me.”
The whole modern world is pining for a genuinely sensational
journalism. This has been discovered by that very able and honest
journalist, Mr. Blatchford, who started his campaign against
Christianity, warned on all sides, I believe, that it would ruin his
paper, but who continued from an honourable sense of intellectual
responsibility. He discovered, however, that while he had undoubtedly
shocked his readers, he had also greatly advanced his newspaper. It was
bought—first, by all the people who agreed with him and wanted to read
it; and secondly, by all the people who disagreed with him, and wanted
to write him letters. Those letters were voluminous (I helped, I am
glad to say, to swell their volume), and they were generally inserted
with a generous fulness. Thus was accidentally discovered (like the
steam-engine) the great journalistic maxim—that if an editor can only
make people angry enough, they will write half his newspaper for him
for nothing.
Some hold that such papers as these are scarcely the proper objects of
so serious a consideration; but that can scarcely be maintained from a
political or ethical point of view. In this problem of the mildness and
tameness of the Harmsworth mind there is mirrored the outlines of a
much larger problem which is akin to it.
The Harmsworthian journalist begins with a worship of success and
violence, and ends in sheer timidity and mediocrity. But he is not
alone in this, nor does he come by this fate merely because he happens
personally to be stupid. Every man, however brave, who begins by
worshipping violence, must end in mere timidity. Every man, however
wise, who begins by worshipping success, must end in mere mediocrity.
This strange and paradoxical fate is involved, not in the individual,
but in the philosophy, in the point of view. It is not the folly of the
man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom. The
worship of success is the only one out of all possible worships of
which this is true, that its followers are foredoomed to become slaves
and cowards. A man may be a hero for the sake of Mrs. Gallup’s ciphers
or for the sake of human sacrifice, but not for the sake of success.
For obviously a man may choose to fail because he loves Mrs. Gallup or
human sacrifice; but he cannot choose to fail because he loves success.
When the test of triumph is men’s test of everything, they never endure
long enough to triumph at all. As long as matters are really hopeful,
hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is
hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the
Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.
It was through this fatal paradox in the nature of things that all
these modern adventurers come at last to a sort of tedium and
acquiescence. They desired strength; and to them to desire strength was
to admire strength; to admire strength was simply to admire the statu
quo. They thought that he who wished to be strong ought to respect the
strong. They did not realize the obvious verity that he who wishes to
be strong must despise the strong. They sought to be everything, to
have the whole force of the cosmos behind them, to have an energy that
would drive the stars. But they did not realize the two great
facts—first, that in the attempt to be everything the first and most
difficult step is to be something; second, that the moment a man is
something, he is essentially defying everything. The lower animals, say
the men of science, fought their way up with a blind selfishness. If
this be so, the only real moral of it is that our unselfishness, if it
is to triumph, must be equally blind. The mammoth did not put his head
on one side and wonder whether mammoths were a little out of date.
Mammoths were at least as much up to date as that individual mammoth
could make them. The great elk did not say, “Cloven hoofs are very much
worn now.” He polished his own weapons for his own use. But in the
reasoning animal there has arisen a more horrible danger, that he may
fail through perceiving his own failure. When modern sociologists talk
of the necessity of accommodating one’s self to the trend of the time,
they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of
people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it
consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating
themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is becoming more and
more the situation of modern England. Every man speaks of public
opinion, and means by public opinion, public opinion minus his opinion.
Every man makes his contribution negative under the erroneous
impression that the next man’s contribution is positive. Every man
surrenders his fancy to a general tone which is itself a surrender. And
over all the heartless and fatuous unity spreads this new and wearisome
and platitudinous press, incapable of invention, incapable of audacity,
capable only of a servility all the more contemptible because it is not
even a servility to the strong. But all who begin with force and
conquest will end in this.
The chief characteristic of the “New journalism” is simply that it is
bad journalism. It is beyond all comparison the most shapeless,
careless, and colourless work done in our day.
I read yesterday a sentence which should be written in letters of gold
and adamant; it is the very motto of the new philosophy of Empire. I
found it (as the reader has already eagerly guessed) in Pearson’s
Magazine, while I was communing (soul to soul) with Mr. C. Arthur
Pearson, whose first and suppressed name I am afraid is Chilperic. It
occurred in an article on the American Presidential Election. This is
the sentence, and every one should read it carefully, and roll it on
the tongue, till all the honey be tasted.
“A little sound common sense often goes further with an audience of
American working-men than much high-flown argument. A speaker who, as
he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board, won
hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential Election.”
I do not wish to soil this perfect thing with comment; the words of
Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. But just think for a
moment of the mind, the strange inscrutable mind, of the man who wrote
that, of the editor who approved it, of the people who are probably
impressed by it, of the incredible American working-man, of whom, for
all I know, it may be true. Think what their notion of “common sense”
must be! It is delightful to realize that you and I are now able to
win thousands of votes should we ever be engaged in a Presidential
Election, by doing something of this kind. For I suppose the nails and
the board are not essential to the exhibition of “common sense;” there
may be variations. We may read—
“A little common sense impresses American working-men more than
high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he made his points, pulled
buttons off his waistcoat, won thousands of votes for his side.” Or,
“Sound common sense tells better in America than high-flown argument.
Thus Senator Budge, who threw his false teeth in the air every time he
made an epigram, won the solid approval of American working-men.” Or
again, “The sound common sense of a gentleman from Earlswood, who stuck
straws in his hair during the progress of his speech, assured the
victory of Mr. Roosevelt.”
There are many other elements in this article on which I should love to
linger. But the matter which I wish to point out is that in that
sentence is perfectly revealed the whole truth of what our
Chamberlainites, hustlers, bustlers, Empire-builders, and strong,
silent men, really mean by “commonsense.” They mean knocking, with
deafening noise and dramatic effect, meaningless bits of iron into a
useless bit of wood. A man goes on to an American platform and behaves
like a mountebank fool with a board and a hammer; well, I do not blame
him; I might even admire him. He may be a dashing and quite decent
strategist. He may be a fine romantic actor, like Burke flinging the
dagger on the floor. He may even (for all I know) be a sublime mystic,
profoundly impressed with the ancient meaning of the divine trade of
the Carpenter, and offering to the people a parable in the form of a
ceremony. All I wish to indicate is the abyss of mental confusion in
which such wild ritualism can be called “sound common sense.” And it is
in that abyss of mental confusion, and in that alone, that the new
Imperialism lives and moves and has its being. The whole glory and
greatness of Mr. Chamberlain consists in this: that if a man hits the
right nail on the head nobody cares where he hits it to or what it
does. They care about the noise of the hammer, not about the silent
drip of the nail. Before and throughout the African war, Mr.
Chamberlain was always knocking in nails, with ringing decisiveness.
But when we ask, “But what have these nails held together? Where is
your carpentry? Where are your contented Outlanders? Where is your
free South Africa? Where is your British prestige? What have your
nails done?” then what answer is there? We must go back (with an
affectionate sigh) to our Pearson for the answer to the question of
what the nails have done: “The speaker who hammered nails into a board
won thousands of votes.”
Now the whole of this passage is admirably characteristic of the new
journalism which Mr. Pearson represents, the new journalism which has
just purchased the Standard. To take one instance out of hundreds, the
incomparable man with the board and nails is described in the Pearson’s
article as calling out (as he smote the symbolic nail), “Lie number
one. Nailed to the Mast! Nailed to the Mast!” In the whole office
there was apparently no compositor or office-boy to point out that we
speak of lies being nailed to the counter, and not to the mast. Nobody
in the office knew that Pearson’s Magazine was falling into a stale
Irish bull, which must be as old as St. Patrick. This is the real and
essential tragedy of the sale of the Standard. It is not merely that
journalism is victorious over literature. It is that bad journalism is
victorious over good journalism.
It is not that one article which we consider costly and beautiful is
being ousted by another kind of article which we consider common or
unclean. It is that of the same article a worse quality is preferred to
a better. If you like popular journalism (as I do), you will know that
Pearson’s Magazine is poor and weak popular journalism. You will know
it as certainly as you know bad butter. You will know as certainly
that it is poor popular journalism as you know that the Strand, in the
great days of Sherlock Holmes, was good popular journalism. Mr. Pearson
has been a monument of this enormous banality. About everything he says
and does there is something infinitely weak-minded. He clamours for
home trades and employs foreign ones to print his paper. When this
glaring fact is pointed out, he does not say that the thing was an
oversight, like a sane man. He cuts it off with scissors, like a child
of three. His very cunning is infantile. And like a child of three,
he does not cut it quite off. In all human records I doubt if there is
such an example of a profound simplicity in deception. This is the
sort of intelligence which now sits in the seat of the sane and
honourable old Tory journalism. If it were really the triumph of the
tropical exuberance of the Yankee press, it would be vulgar, but still
tropical. But it is not. We are delivered over to the bramble, and
from the meanest of the shrubs comes the fire upon the cedars of
Lebanon.
The only question now is how much longer the fiction will endure that
journalists of this order represent public opinion. It may be doubted
whether any honest and serious Tariff Reformer would for a moment
maintain that there was any majority for Tariff Reform in the country
comparable to the ludicrous preponderance which money has given it
among the great dailies. The only inference is that for purposes of
real public opinion the press is now a mere plutocratic oligarchy.
Doubtless the public buys the wares of these men, for one reason or
another. But there is no more reason to suppose that the public admires
their politics than that the public admires the delicate philosophy of
Mr. Crosse or the darker and sterner creed of Mr. Blackwell. If these
men are merely tradesmen, there is nothing to say except that there are
plenty like them in the Battersea Park Road, and many much better. But
if they make any sort of attempt to be politicians, we can only point
out to them that they are not as yet even good journalists.