The Press and Gambling
It remains to say a few words about the press, which is largely responsible for the great evils of gambling, particularly of the professional betting system, under the plea of devotion to sport, which even the Duke of Devonshire seems to consider is being overdone, according to a recent speech made by him in public. The prohibition of the betting odds was strongly urged upon the Select Committee of the House of Lords. It would be a fatal blow to bookmaking, for nine bets out of ten are now made without agreement with the bookmakers as to the figures, but depending upon their subsequent publication as reported from the starting-post. The betting men put forward advocates before the Committee who pretended to think that such legislation would not reduce betting, but the best test is the frantic opposition which the bookmakers offer to the proposition. It is earnestly advocated by men like Mr. Le Blanc Smith of Oxford University and others interested in the purity of sport. The Committee say in their Report on Betting (Report and Evidence, No. 389, 1902; Evidence, No. 370, 1901; Index, 173 and 114, 1902): “There can be little doubt that the almost universal practice of publishing in newspapers what are known as ‘Starting-Price Odds’ greatly facilitates betting upon horse-races”; but, as they considered it to be in the nature of news, and a protection against fraud, they were not prepared to recommend the suggestion. It may be pointed out, however, that although no doubt the odds published are often correct, there is a regular system arranged between the bookmakers and the baser press organs for quoting unreal odds to lure on the public, which was exposed three years ago in an amusing controversy between two London newspapers. Moreover, the prevention of the swindling of some of the foolish public by bookmakers seems a poor reason for permitting the continuation of a practice which so materially assists in the demoralisation of hundreds of thousands of the populace. Considerable pains have been taken to ascertain privately the feeling of the better class of newspapers upon this subject, and it is found that they would welcome such a prohibition, provided it be made universal, as it will actually benefit all respectable journals. Their circulation is reduced by the public being led to spend their “press money” upon the so-called sporting or betting papers, the number of which is legion, many of them making great incomes of thousands per annum; besides which a considerable number of the less respectable newspapers issue during the racing seasons editions printed literally for nothing beyond the result of horse-races, and in the winter of football matches, the ordinary matter which has remained in type enabling them to escape from the meshes of the new bye-laws as to publications consisting wholly or chiefly of sporting—betting—information. Parliament will have to make up its mind some day to deal with this aspect of the betting question, and to say that the liberty of the press is not liberty to debauch the public and to share in the proceeds of doing so; that if Lord Beaconsfield was right, in his time, in stigmatising the Turf as a vast engine of national demoralisation, and if its powers for evil are now far greater than in his days, the press shall not continue to bolster up the system by publishing the odds, and sharing in its ill-gained profits through the medium of advertisements.