The "free press"

by George Marion

News Since Feudal Days

Near the middle of the past century, governments, bankers, rich merchants, kept private couriers who travelled to all important European capitals. By carrier pigeon—and in America also by pony express—they sent specific information on prices and market conditions, plus general political information required for their long-range business planning. The couriers built up extremely valuable contacts that would have made them very valuable to newspapers. But newspapers couldn’t afford their costly services and the couriers couldn’t afford to lose their rich clients by publishing their information. Newspapers had the right to print news but no way to get it.

The telegraph broke that situation wide open. It made the relative isolation of the newspapers impossible; it spelled the doom of the private news systems.[A] It ended feudalism in the information field. But not everyone saw that immediately. Paul Julius Reuter, Prussian government courier with many business clients and topnotch European contacts, understood it at once. He determined to switch to newspapers, offering a telegraphic news service to several papers at once. Germany was no place for a progressive idea in 1851, and Britain was the nation with the most extensive world interests, so Reuter set up shop in London. His idea was a smashing success. Reuters soon was the all-powerful government-backed British Empire news monopoly.

Charles Havas, a Hungarian, established a similar monopoly for the French Empire and France’s sphere of interest, and Dr. Bernhard Wolff did as much for Germany. In the United States, Associated Press grew out of the same conditions, except that the agency, like the nation itself, was almost wholly absorbed in internal development, almost entirely disinterested in the rest of the world. Toward the close of the century, however, there were signs that the tremendous productive forces developed under American capitalism would ultimately seek an empire if not world empire. The country began to show more interest in world news. Associated Press, to improve its monopoly position and bar the possibility of successful competition at home, sought exclusive rights to a supply of world news. It made a deal with the European agencies.

That deal and the world news relationships of which it was a part, were well hidden from the world prior to World War II, but the war completed a change in the former secret relationships. Marking this change, A.P. chief Kent Cooper published the story of the news cartel in 1942. His book was called Barriers Down. Cooper published it only to mobilize support for his “crusade.”

Cooper’s “crusade” is nothing more than a drive for world news monopoly. Barriers Down is designed to justify American imperialist news domination by coating it with high moral purpose. The London Economist, organ of battered British imperialism, notes in its issue of December 2, 1944:

Mr. Cooper, like most big business executives, experiences a peculiar moral glow in finding that his idea of freedom coincides with his commercial advantage. In his ode to Liberty there is no suggestion than when all barriers are down the huge financial resources of the American agencies might enable them to dominate the world. His desire to prevent another Goebbels from poisoning the wells will be universally applauded, but democracy does not necessarily mean making the whole world safe for A.P. In this, as in other post-war issues—such as civil aviation—commercial practices are habitually confused with such big words as “liberty and the Rights of Man.”

Cooper’s book nevertheless lends the strongest authority to what would otherwise be an almost incredible story of news imperialism. We shall lean on it heavily.

Chapter V
SECRET HISTORY OF A CARTEL

The story begins in the 1840’s with the formation of the great modern news agencies in obedience to the click of the telegraph key. At that time, Great Britain dominated the world. France, a powerful state, was nevertheless a link in the British system. Germany had not yet fully emerged as a modern industrial power. Russia, ruling a sprawling empire, was herself, in a sense, something of a political and economic “colony” of the more advanced European states. The Far East was one huge, thinly-disguised sphere for European exploitation, too, with Britain hogging the lion’s share. The United States, in addition to exercising little influence in world affairs, lacked the immediate facilities for world news competition: Great Britain controlled almost all cable and other communications.

Under these conditions, there arose what Kent Cooper justly terms “the greatest and most powerful international monopoly of the 19th Century,” the world news cartel. Considering that A.P. voluntarily participated in it, Cooper’s highly moral tone is strange. It is true, nevertheless, that the agencies “brought under their control the power to decide what the people of each nation would be allowed to know of the people of other nations and in what shade of meaning the news was to be presented.”

* * * * *

Summarizing the situation, the A.P. boss continues:

For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, had divided the globe among the three according to Reuters’ idea of proper spheres of influence for each.... Reuters received English-speaking North America, in which since 1893 the A.P. had bought exclusive territorial rights.

For long years Reuters, acceptably to Havas and Wolff, was granted a free hand in Canada. Later this free hand was extended to include Mexico, Central America and the West Indies where Reuters and Havas held the sovereign rights. The two, however, admitted no control whatever to Wolff, the German Agency, in the Western Hemisphere. Reuters had Great Britain, including all the colonies and dominions, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, China and what might be called the suzerain states, or those in which England had exerted a sphere of influence.

Havas [since succeeded by France-Presse] controlled the French Empire, Switzerland and all the Latin countries, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and those in South America. [Also the Balkans.]

To Wolff [later D.N.B. or the Deutsches Nachtrichten Buro] fell the Scandinavian states, with Russia and all the Slav nations. Austria also came under the jurisdiction of the German agency.