The amazing decision of the Government to employ methods quite alien to
England, and rather belonging to the police of the Continent, probably
arises from the appearance of papers which are lucid and fighting, like
the papers of the Continent. The business may be put in many ways. But
one way of putting it is simply to say that a monopoly of bad journalism
is resisting the possibility of good journalism. Journalism is not the
same thing as literature; but there is good and bad journalism, as there
is good and bad literature, as there is good and bad football. For the
last twenty years or so the plutocrats who govern England have allowed
the English nothing but bad journalism. Very bad journalism, simply
considered as journalism.
It always takes a considerable time to see the simple and central fact
about anything. All sorts of things have been said about the modern
Press, especially the Yellow Press; that it is Jingo or Philistine or
sensational or wrongly inquisitive or vulgar or indecent or trivial; but
none of these have anything really to do with the point.
The point about the Press is that it is not what it is called. It is not
the “popular Press.” It is not the public Press. It is not an organ
of public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all
sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great
nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and
enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and
honest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on
the ordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and
a monopoly. He receives all his political information and all
his political marching orders from what is by this time a sort of
half-conscious secret society, with very few members, but a great deal
of money.
This enormous and essential fact is concealed for us by a number of
legends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that
the Press is flashy or trivial _because_ it is popular. In other words,
an attempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism
as the natural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish.
The democracy has no more to do with the papers than it has with the
peerages. The millionaire newspapers are vulgar and silly because the
millionaires are vulgar and silly. It is the proprietor, not the editor,
not the sub-editor, least of all the reader, who is pleased with this
monotonous prairie of printed words. The same slander on democracy can
be noticed in the case of advertisements. There is many a tender old
Tory imagination that vaguely feels that our streets would be hung with
escutcheons and tapestries, if only the profane vulgar had not hung them
with advertisements of Sapolio and Sunlight Soap. But advertisement does
not come from the unlettered many. It comes from the refined few.
Did you ever hear of a mob rising to placard the Town Hall with
proclamations in favour of Sapolio? Did you ever see a poor, ragged
man laboriously drawing and painting a picture on the wall in favour
of Sunlight Soap--simply as a labour of love? It is nonsense; those who
hang our public walls with ugly pictures are the same select few who
hang their private walls with exquisite and expensive pictures. The
vulgarisation of modern life has come from the governing class; from the
highly educated class. Most of the people who have posters in Camberwell
have peerages at Westminster. But the strongest instance of all is that
which has been unbroken until lately, and still largely prevails; the
ghastly monotony of the Press.
Then comes that other legend; the notion that men like the masters of
the Newspaper Trusts “give the people what they want.” Why, it is the
whole aim and definition of a Trust that it gives the people what it
chooses. In the old days, when Parliaments were free in England, it
was discovered that one courtier was allowed to sell all the silk, and
another to sell all the sweet wine. A member of the House of Commons
humorously asked who was allowed to sell all the bread. I really tremble
to think what that sarcastic legislator would have said if he had been
put off with the modern nonsense about “gauging the public taste.”
Suppose the first courtier had said that, by his shrewd, self-made
sense, he had detected that people had a vague desire for silk; and
even a deep, dim human desire to pay so much a yard for it! Suppose
the second courtier said that he had, by his own rugged intellect,
discovered a general desire for wine: and that people bought his wine
at his price--when they could buy no other! Suppose a third courtier had
jumped up and said that people always bought his bread when they could
get none anywhere else.
Well, that is a perfect parallel. “After bread, the need of the people
is knowledge,” said Danton. Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes
through to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread
might come through to a besieged city. Men must wish to know what is
happening, whoever has the privilege of telling them. They must listen
to the messenger, even if he is a liar. They must listen to the liar,
even if he is a bore. The official journalist for some time past has
been both a bore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to
neglect his sheets of news altogether. Lately the capitalist Press
really has begun to be neglected; because its bad journalism was
overpowering and appalling. Lately we have really begun to find out that
capitalism cannot write, just as it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or
make a joke, or do any other stricken human thing. But this discovery
has been quite recent. The capitalist newspaper was never actually
unread until it was actually unreadable.
If you retain the servile superstition that the Press, as run by the
capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water
in a desert is popular), consider the case of the solemn articles in
praise of the men who own newspapers--men of the type of Cadbury or
Harmsworth, men of the type of the small club of millionaires. Did you
ever hear a plain man in a tramcar or train talking about Carnegie’s
bright genial smile or Rothschild’s simple, easy hospitality? Did you
ever hear an ordinary citizen ask what was the opinion of Sir Joseph
Lyons about the hopes and fears of this, our native land? These few
small-minded men publish, papers to praise themselves. You could no more
get an intelligent poor man to praise a millionaire’s soul, except for
hire, than you could get him to sell a millionaire’s soap, except for
hire. And I repeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of
the new plutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic
jealousy. The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the
appearance of good journalism.
There is no average member of the public who would not prefer to have
Lloyd George discussed as what he is, a Welshman of genius and ideals,
strangely fascinated by bad fashion and bad finance, rather than
discussed as what neither he nor anyone else ever was, a perfect
democrat or an utterly detestable demagogue. There is no reader of a
daily paper who would not feel more concern--and more respect--for Sir
Rufus Isaacs as a man who has been a stockbroker, than as a man who
happens to be Attorney-General. There is no man in the street who is not
more interested in Lloyd George’s investments than in his Land Campaign.
There is no man in the street who could not understand (and like)
Rufus Isaacs as a Jew better than he can possibly like him as a British
statesman. There is no sane journalist alive who would say that the
official account of Marconis would be better “copy” than the true
account that such papers as this have dragged out. We have committed one
crime against the newspaper proprietor which he will never forgive. We
point out that his papers are dull. And we propose to print some papers
that are interesting.