Probably the worst feature of our civilization is the daily paper. It
scatters crime, bad manners, and a pernicious levity as a wind
scatters fire. Crime feeds upon crime, and the newspapers make sure
that every criminally inclined reader shall have enough to feed upon,
shall have his vicious nature aroused and stimulated. Is it probable
that a second and a third President of the United States would ever
have been assassinated by shooting, had not such notoriety been given
to the first crime? Murder, arson, theft, peculation, are as
contagious as smallpox.
Who can help a pitying or a scornful smile when he hears of a school
of journalism, a school for promoting crime and debauching the manners
and the conscience of the people?--for teaching the gentle art of
lying, for manufacturing news when there is no news? The pupils are
taught, I suppose, how to serve up the sweepings from the streets and
the gutters and the bar-rooms in the most engaging manner. They are
taught how to give the great Public what it wants, and the one thing
the great Public wants, and can never get enough of is any form of
sensationalism. It clearly loves scandals about the rich, or anything
about the rich, because we all want and expect to be rich, to
out-shine our neighbors, to cut a wide swath in society. Give us
anything about the rich, the Public says; we will take the mud from
their shoes; if we can't get that, give us the parings of their
finger-nails.
The inelastic character of the newspaper is a hampering factor--so
many columns must be filled, news or no news. And when there is a
great amount of important news, see how much is suppressed that but
for this inelasticity would have been printed!
The professor at the school of journalism says: "I try to hammer it
into them day after day that they have got to learn to get the
news--that, whatever else a reporter can or cannot do, he isn't a
reporter till he has learned to get the news." Hence the invasion of
private houses, the bribery, the stealing of letters, the listening at
key-holes, the craze for photographing the most sacred episodes, the
betrayals of confidence, that the newspapers are responsible for.
They must get what the dear Public most likes to hear, if they have to
scale a man's housetop, and come down his chimney. And if they cannot
get the true story, they must invent one. The idle curiosity of the
Public must be satisfied.
Now the real news, the news the Public is entitled to, is always easy
to get. It grows by the wayside. The Public is entitled to public
news, not to family secrets; to the life of the street and the mart,
not to life behind closed doors. In the dearth of real news, the paper
is filled with the dust and sweepings from the public highways and
byways, from saloons, police courts, political halls--sordid,
ephemeral, and worthless, because it would never get into print if
there were real news to serve up.
Then the advertising. The items of news now peep out at us from
between flaming advertisements of the shopmen's goods, like men on the
street hawking their wares, each trying to out-scream the other and
making such a Bedlam that our ears are stunned.[6]
[Footnote 6: This fragment is hardly representative of the attitude of
Mr. Burroughs toward our worthy dailies, and, could he have expanded
the article, it would have had in its entirety a different tone. He
lived on the breath of the newspapers; was always eager for legitimate
news; and was especially outspoken in admiration of the superb work
done by many newspaper correspondents during the World War.
Furthermore, he was himself always most approachable and friendly to
the reporters, complaining, however, that they often failed to quote
him when he took real pains to help them get things straight; while
they often insisted on emphasizing sensational aspects, and even put
words in his mouth which he never uttered. But the truth is, he valued
the high-class newspapers, though regarding even them as a two-edged
sword, since their praiseworthy efforts are so vitiated by craze for
the sensational.--C. B.]