Part 9

During labor disputes the facts are usually distorted to the injury of labor. In one case, strikers held a meeting on a vacant lot enclosed by a newly-erected billboard. Forthwith appeared, in a yellow journal professing warm friendship for labor, a front-page cut of the billboard and a lurid story of how the strikers had built a “stockade,” behind which they intended to bid defiance to the bluecoats. It is not surprising that, when the van bringing these lying sheets appeared in their quarter of the city, the libeled men overturned it.

During the struggle of carriage-drivers for a six-day week, certain great dailies lent themselves to a concerted effort of the liverymen to win public sympathy by making it appear that the strikers were interfering with funerals. One paper falsely stated that a strong force of police was being held in reserve in case of “riots,” and that policemen would ride beside the non-union drivers of hearses. Another, under the misleading headline, “Two Funerals stopped by Striking Cabmen,” described harmless colloquies between hearse-drivers and pickets. This was followed up with a solemn editorial, “May a Man go to his Long Rest in Peace?” although, as a matter of fact, the strikers had no intention of interfering with funerals.

The lying headline is a favorite device for misleading the reader. One sheet prints on its front page a huge “scare” headline, “‘Hang Haywood and a Million Men will march in Revenge,’ says Darrow.” The few readers whose glance fell from the incendiary headline to the dispatch below it found only the following: “Mr. Darrow, in closing the argument, said that ‘if the jury hangs Bill Haywood, one million willing hands will seize the banner of liberty by the open grave, and bear it on to victory.’” In the same style, a dispatch telling of the death of an English policeman, from injuries received during a riot precipitated by suffragettes attempting to enter a hall during a political meeting, is headed, “Suffragettes kill Policeman!”

The alacrity with which many dailies serve as mouthpieces of the financial powers came out very clearly during the recent industrial depression. The owner of one leading newspaper called his reporters together and said in effect, “Boys, the first of you who turns in a story of a lay-off or a shut-down gets the sack.” Early in the depression the newspapers teemed with glowing accounts of the resumption of steel mills and the revival of business, all baseless. After harvest time they began to cheep, “Prosperity,” “Bumper Crops,” “Farmers buying Automobiles.” In cities where banks and employers offered clearing-house certificates instead of cash, the press usually printed fairy tales of the enthusiasm with which these makeshifts were taken by depositors and workingmen. The numbers and sufferings of the unemployed were ruthlessly concealed from the reading public. A mass meeting of men out of work was represented as “anarchistic” or “instigated by the socialists for political effect.” In one daily appeared a dispatch under the heading “Five Thousand Jobs Offered; only Ten apply.” It stated that the Commissioner of Public Works of Detroit, misled by reports of dire distress, set afoot a public work which called for five thousand men. Only ten men applied for work, and all these expected to be bosses. Correspondence with the official established the fact that the number of jobs offered was five hundred, and that three thousand men applied for them!

IV

On the desk of every editor and sub-editor of a newspaper run by a capitalist promoter now [1910] under prison sentence lay a list of sixteen corporations in which the owner was interested. This was to remind them not to print anything damaging to these concerns. In the office these corporations were jocularly referred to as “sacred cows.”

Nearly every form of privilege is found in the herd of “sacred cows” venerated by the daily press.

The railroad company is a “sacred cow.” At a hearing before a state railroad commission, the attorney of a shippers’ association got an eminent magnate into the witness chair, with the intention of wringing from him the truth regarding the political expenditures of his railroad. At this point the commission, an abject creature of the railroads, arbitrarily excluded the daring attorney from the case. The memorable excoriation which that attorney gave the commission to its face was made to appear in the papers as the _cause_ instead of the _consequence_ of this exclusion. Subsequently, when the attorney filed charges with the governor against the commission, one editor wrote an editorial stating the facts and criticising the commissioners. The editorial was suppressed after it was in type.

The public-service company is a “sacred cow.” In a city of the Southwest, last summer [1909], while houses were burning from lack of water for the fire hose, a lumber company offered to supply the firemen with water. The water company replied that they had “sufficient.” Neither this nor other damaging information concerning the company’s conduct got into the columns of the local press. A yellow journal conspicuous in the fight for cheaper gas by its ferocious onslaughts on the “gas trust,” suddenly ceased its attack. Soon it began to carry a full-page “Cook with gas” advertisement. The cow had found the entrance to the sacred fold.

Traction is a “sacred cow.” The truth about Cleveland’s fight for the three-cent fare has been widely suppressed. For instance, while Mayor Johnson was superintending the removal of the tracks of a defunct street railway, he was served with a court order enjoining him from tearing up the rails. As the injunction was not indorsed, as by law it should be, he thought it was an ordinary communication, and put it in his pocket to examine later. The next day he was summoned to show reason why he should not be found in contempt of court. When the facts came out, he was, of course, discharged. An examination of the seven leading dailies of the country shows that a dispatch was sent out from Cleveland stating that Mayor Johnson, after acknowledging service, pocketed the injunction, and ordered his men to proceed with their work. In the newspaper offices this dispatch was then embroidered. One paper said the mayor told his men to go ahead and ignore the injunction. Another had the mayor intimating in advance that he would not obey an order if one were issued. A third invented a conversation in which the mayor and his superintendent made merry over the injunction. Not one of the seven journals reported the mayor’s complete exoneration later.

The tax system is a “sacred cow.” During a banquet of two hundred single-taxers, at the conclusion of their state conference, a man fell in a fit. Reporters saw the trifling incident, yet the morning papers, under big headlines, “Many Poisoned at Single-Tax Banquet,” told in detail how a large number of banqueters had been ptomaine-poisoned. The conference had formulated a single-tax amendment to the state constitution, which they intended to present to the people for signature under the new Initiative law. One paper gave a line and a half to this most significant action. No other paper noticed it.

The party system is a “sacred cow.” When a county district court declared that the Initiative and Referendum amendment to the Oregon constitution was invalid, the item was spread broadcast. But when later the Supreme Court of Oregon reversed that decision, the fact was too trivial to be put on the wires.

The “man higher up” is a “sacred cow.” In reporting Prosecutor Heney’s argument in the Calhoun case, the leading San Francisco paper omitted everything on the guilt of Calhoun and made conspicuous certain statements of Mr. Heney with reference to himself, with intent to make it appear that his argument was but a vindication of himself, and that he made no points against the accused. The argument for the defense was printed in full, the “points” being neatly displayed in large type at proper intervals. At a crisis in this prosecution a Washington dispatch quoted the chairman of the Appropriations Committee as stating in the House that “Mr. Heney received during 1908 $23,000, for which he performed no service whatever for the Government.” It was some hours before the report was corrected by adding Mr. Tawney’s concluding words, “during that year.”

In view of their suppression and misrepresentation of vital truth, the big daily papers, broadly speaking, must be counted as allies of those whom—as Editor Dana reverently put it—“God has endowed with a genius for saving, for getting rich, for bringing wealth together, for accumulating and concentrating money.” In rallying to the side of the people they are slower than the weeklies, the magazines, the pulpit, the platform, the bar, the literati, the intellectuals, the social settlements, and the universities.

Now and then, to be sure, in some betrayed and misgoverned city, a man of force takes some little sheet, prints all the news, ventilates the local situation, arouses the community, builds up a huge circulation, and proves that truth-telling still pays. But such exploits do not counteract the economic developments which have brought on the glacial epoch in journalism. Note what happens later to such a newspaper. It is now a valuable property, and as such it will be treated. The editor need not repeat the bold strokes that won public confidence; he has only to avoid anything that would forfeit it. Unconsciously he becomes, perhaps, less a newspaper man, more a business man. He may make investments which muzzle his paper here, form social connections which silence it there. He may tire of fighting and want to “cash in.” In any case, when his newspaper falls into the hands of others, it will be run as a business, and not as a crusade.

V

What can be done about the suppression of news? At least, we can refrain from arraigning and preaching. To urge the editor, under the thumb of the advertiser or of the owner, to be more independent, is to invite him to remove himself from his profession. As for the capitalist-owner, to exhort him to run his newspaper in the interests of truth and progress is about as reasonable as to exhort the mill-owner to work his property for the public good instead of for his private benefit.

What is needed is a broad new avenue to the public mind. Already smothered facts are cutting little channels for themselves. The immense vogue of the “muck-raking” magazines is due to their being vehicles for suppressed news. Non-partisan leaders are meeting with cheering response when they found weeklies in order to reach their natural following. The Socialist Party supports two dailies, less to spread their ideas than to print what the capitalistic dailies would stifle. Civic associations, municipal voters’ leagues, and legislative voters’ leagues, are circulating tons of leaflets and bulletins full of suppressed facts. Within a year [1909–10] five cities have, with the tax-payers’ money, started journals to acquaint the citizens with municipal happenings and affairs. In many cities have sprung up private non-partisan weeklies to report civic information. Moreover, the spoken word is once more a power. The demand for lecturers and speakers is insatiable, and the platform bids fair to recover its old prestige. The smotherers are dismayed by the growth of the Chautauqua circuit. Congressional speeches give vent to boycotted truth, and circulate widely under the franking privilege. City clubs and Saturday lunch clubs are formed to listen to facts and ideas tabooed by the daily press. More is made of public hearings before committees of councilmen or legislators.

When all is said, however, the defection of the daily press has been a staggering blow to democracy.

Many insist that the public is able to recognize and pay for the truth. “Trust the public” and _in the end_ merit will be rewarded. Time and again men have sunk money in starting an honest and outspoken sheet, confident that soon the public would rally to its support. But such hopes are doomed to disappointment. The editor who turns away bad advertising or defies his big patrons cannot lay his copy on the subscriber’s doorstep for as little money as the editor who purveys publicity for all it is worth; and the masses will not pay three cents when another paper that “looks just as good” can be had for a cent. In a word, the art of simulating honesty and independence has outrun the insight of the average reader.

To conclude that the people are not able to recognize and pay for the truth about current happenings simply puts the dissemination of news in a class with other momentous social services. Because people fail to recognize and pay for good books, endowed libraries stud the land. Because they fail to recognize and pay for good instruction, education is provided free or at part cost. Just as the moment came when it was seen that private schools, loan libraries, commercial parks, baths, gymnasia, athletic grounds, and playgrounds would not answer, so the moment is here for recognizing that the commercial news-medium does not adequately meet the needs of democratic citizenship.

Endowment is necessary, and, since we are not yet wise enough to run a public-owned daily newspaper, the funds must come from private sources. In view of the fact that in fifteen years large donations aggregating more than a thousand million of dollars have been made for public purposes in this country, it is safe to predict that, if the usefulness of a non-commercial newspaper be demonstrated, funds will be forthcoming. In the cities, where the secret control of the channels of publicity is easiest, there are likely to be founded financially independent newspapers, the gift of public-spirited men of wealth.

The ultimate control of such a foundation constitutes a problem. A newspaper free to ignore the threats of big advertisers or powerful interests, one not to be bought, bullied, or bludgeoned, one that might at any moment blurt out the damning truth about police protection to vice, corporate tax-dodging, the grabbing of water frontage by railroads, or the non-enforcement of the factory laws, would be of such strategic importance in the struggle for wealth that desperate efforts would be made to chloroform it. If its governing board perpetuated itself by coöptation, it would eventually be packed with “safe” men, who would see to it that the newspaper was run in a “conservative” spirit; for, in the long run, those who can watch for an advantage _all_ the time will beat the people, who can watch only _some_ of the time.

Chloroformed the endowed newspaper will be, unless it be committed to the onward thought and conscience of the community. This could be done by letting vacancies on the governing board be filled in turn by the local bar association, the medical association, the ministers’ union, the degree-granting faculties, the federated teachers, the central labor union, the chamber of commerce, the associated charities, the public libraries, the non-partisan citizens’ associations, the improvement leagues, and the social settlements. In this way the endowment would rest ultimately on the chief apexes of moral and intellectual worth in the city.

While giving, with headline, cut, and cartoon, the interesting news,—forgeries and accidents, society and sports, as well as business and politics,—the endowed newspaper would not dramatize crime, or gossip of private affairs; above all, it would not “fake,” “doctor,” or sensationalize the news. Too self-respecting to use keyhole tactics, and too serious to chronicle the small beer of the wedding trousseau or the divorce court, such a newspaper could not begin to match the commercial press in circulation. But it would reach those who reach the public through the weeklies and monthlies, and would inform the teachers, preachers, lecturers, and public men, who speak to the people eye to eye.

What is more, it would be a _corrective newspaper_, giving a wholesome leverage for lifting up the commercial press. The big papers would not dare be caught smothering or “cooking” the news. The revelations of an independent journal that everybody believed, would be a terror to them, and, under the spur of a competitor not to be frightened, bought up, or tired out, they would be compelled, in sheer self-preservation, to tell the truth much oftener than they do.

The Erie Canal handles less than a twentieth of the traffic across the State of New York, yet, by its standing offer of cheap transportation, it exerts a regulative pressure on railway rates which is realized only when the canal opens in the spring. On the same principle, the endowed newspaper in a given city might print only a twentieth of the daily press output, and yet exercise over the other nineteen twentieths an influence great and salutary.

THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN JOURNALISM

BY HENRY WATTERSON

I

The daily newspaper, under modern conditions, embraces two parts very nearly separate and distinct in their requirements—the journalistic and the commercial.

The aptitude for producing a commodity is one thing, and the aptitude for putting this commodity on the market is quite another thing. The difference is not less marked in newspaper-making than in other pursuits. The framing and execution of contracts for advertising, for printing-paper and ink, linotyping and press-work; the handling of money and credits; the organization of the telegraphic service and postal service; the supervision of machinery—in short, the providing of the vehicle and the power that turns its wheels—is the work of a single mind, and usually it is engrossing work. It demands special talent and ceaseless activity and attention all day long, and every day in the year. Except it be sufficient, considerable success is out of the question. Sometimes its sufficiency is able to float an indifferent product. Without it the best product is likely to languish.

The making of the newspaper, that is, the collating of the news and its consistent and uniform distribution and arrangement, the representation of the mood and tense of the time, a certain continuity, more or less, of thought and purpose,—the popularization of the commodity,—call for energies and capacities of another sort. The editor of the morning newspaper turns night into day. When others sleep he must be awake and astir. His is the only vocation where versatility is not a hindrance or a diversion; where the conventional is not imposed upon his personality. He should be many-sided, and he is often most engaging when he seems least heedful of rule. Yet nowhere is ready and sound discretion in greater or more constant need. The editor must never lose his head. Sure, no less than prompt, judgment is required at every turning. It is his business to think for everybody. Each subordinate must be so drilled and fitted to his place as to become in a sense the replica of his chief. And, even then, when at noon he goes carefully over the work of the night before, he will be fortunate if he finds that all has gone as he planned it, or could wish it.

I am assuming that the make-up of the newspaper is an autocracy: the product of one man, the offspring of a policy; the man indefatigable and conscientious, the policy fixed, sober, and alert. In the famous sea-fight the riffraff of sailors from all nations, whom Paul Jones had picked up wherever he could find them, responded like the parts of a machine to the will of their commander. They seemed inspired, the British Captain Pearson testified before the Court of Inquiry. So in a well-ordered newspaper office, when at midnight wires are flashing and feet are hurrying, and to the onlooking stranger chaos seems to reign, the directing mind and hand have their firm grip upon the tiller-ropes, which extend from the editorial room to the composing-room, from the composing-room to the press-room, and from the press-room to the breakfast-table.

II

Personal journalism had its origin in the crude requirements of the primitive newspaper. An editor, a printer, and a printer’s devil, were all-sufficient. For half a century after the birth of the daily newspaper in America, one man did everything which fell under the head of editorial work. The army of reporters, telegraphers, and writers, duly officered and classified, which has come to occupy the larger field, was undreamed of by the pioneers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

Individual ownership was the rule. Little money was embarked. Commonly it was “So-and-So’s paper.” Whilst the stories of private war, of pistols and coffee, have been exaggerated, the early editors were much beset; were held to strict accountability for what appeared in their columns; sometimes had to take their lives in their hands. In certain regions the duello flourished—one might say became the fashion. Up to the War of Secession, the instance of an editor who had not had a personal encounter, indeed, many encounters, was a rare one. Not a few editors acquired celebrity as “crack shots,” gaining more reputation by their guns than by their pens.

The familiar “Stop my paper” was personally addressed, an ebullition of individual resentment.

“Mr. Swain,” said an irate subscriber to the founder of the _Philadelphia Ledger_, whom he met one morning on his way to his place of business, “I have stopped your paper, sir—I have stopped your paper.”

Mr. Swain was a gentleman of dignity and composure. “Indeed,” said he, with a kindly intonation; “come with me and let us see about it.”

When the two had reached the spot where the office of the _Ledger_ stood, nothing unusual appeared to have happened: the building was still there, the force within apparently engaged in its customary activities. Mr. Swain looked leisurely about him, and turning upon his now expectant but thoroughly puzzled fellow townsman, he said,—

“Everything seems to be as I left it last night. Stop my paper, sir! How could you utter such a falsehood!”

Mr. James Gordon Bennett, the elder, was frequently and brutally assailed. So was Mr. Greeley. Mr. Prentice, though an expert in the use of weapons, did not escape many attacks of murderous intent. Editors fought among themselves, anon with fatal result, especially about Richmond in Virginia, and Nashville in Tennessee, and New Orleans. So self-respecting a gentleman, and withal so peaceful a citizen, as Mr. William Cullen Bryant, fell upon a rival journalist with a horsewhip on Broadway, in New York. The prosy libel suit has come to take the place of the tragic street duel,—the courts of law to settle what was formerly submitted to the code of honor,—the star part of “fighting editor” having come to be a relic of bygone squalor and glory. The call to arms in 1861 found few of the editorial bullies ready for the fray, and no one of them made his mark as a soldier in battle. They were good only on parade. Even the South had its fill of combat, valor grew too common to be distinguished, and, out of a very excess of broil and blood, along with multiplied opportunities for the display of courage, gun-play got its quietus. The good old times, when it was thought that a man who had failed at all else could still keep a hotel and edit a newspaper, have passed away. They are gone forever. If a gentleman kills his man nowadays, even in honest and fair fight, they call it murder. Editors have actually to be educated to their work, and to work for their living. The soul of Bombastes has departed, and journalism is no longer irradiated and advertised by the flash of arms.