The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

The French press under the immediate inspiration and control of the government held the people in compact unity. It stimulated the morale and intensified the purpose of the soldiers, for it was possible to strew the trenches with newspapers within two hours after they were printed. This was of inestimable patriotic service. Not any other government used the newspapers with such skill or with greater beneficial results.

Newspaper influence was sought in the process of the censorship. The object of censorship was not alone to prevent information from reaching the enemy but also to influence public opinion. All warring nations seek the good opinion of the neutrals—seek to have neutral nations convinced of the ultimate success of their armies—hence the impulse to suppress the news of defeat and to exalt victory. Early in the war this was the pronounced attitude of Germany and Great Britain toward America, much to the annoyance of the American newspapers.

Germany’s efforts to influence the American public through our newspapers were so constant, so vociferous, so transparent, that everybody recognized the purpose. Yet she continued to spend great sums of money on propaganda to the very end of the war. Germany worked the press of every country. It was a part of her war plan just as much as was the making of bullets or asphyxiating gas. It was thought out and arranged for and practiced before the war broke. It was depended on to create sympathy and to establish justification; and it was exceedingly efficacious in the early periods and influenced greatly to postpone our entrance into the conflict.

Despite the censorship the war was very well reported by American newspapers. Our journals were read with an interest approaching to anxiety, and the public came to believe that the news was truthfully presented. News reading was raised to a high plane of importance. The war gave the public greater confidence in the newspapers.

In olden times, despotic times, in Greece and Italy let us say, before newspapers existed, the people gathered in public places to listen to government proclamations and whatever news the rulers were pleased to give out. The information was proclaimed by heralds or was placarded on market walls. The usual policy was to keep the people in ignorance of what was going on. No public opinion existed, for the public had no information on which to form conclusions. Many governments prevented gatherings of the people knowing the power of the people to create sentiment and rebellion. Not for weeks or months did remote regions get important news that the government wished to conceal. No means of quick communication existed. The concealment of news and the suppression of public sentiment helped to strengthen despotic government. The rulers might circulate false news as well as the truth, and frequently did so. Our present-day censorship is an hereditary relic of this ancient-day concealment.

The newspaper’s greatest influence is not in persuading persons who have learned to think for themselves. It is exercised on that great mass of our population that has no other source of information than the newspapers. In thousands of families not more than two or three books are purchased in an entire year, and these are likely to be books of fiction. Yet few families are without a daily newspaper. Usually one paper only is taken, and how could it happen otherwise than that the household should come to the editor’s way of thinking when no other thought than his comes to their attention? This condition applies to people in moderate circumstances, employees, helpers, those who live by physical toil or who do the simplest kind of clerical work. These people are easily influenced because they have not been trained to think or analyze for themselves. They depend on the newspaper for information, explanation, suggestion. They have little inclination or time to study with diligence the great questions of the day and have few or no facilities for doing so in any event. They are not interested in profound argument but they accept conclusions readily. If the editor be wise he will seek to know what proportion of his readers are of this type.

The average newspaper reader does not think overmuch of what he is reading but he is highly receptive. His conclusion is likely to be affirmative. It is his nature to believe rather than to distrust. He is easily led by artful groupings of fact, rather more easily led thus than by argument requiring much thought. There is not time in these strenuous days for the old-fashioned kind of thinking. Quick conclusions are the vogue and they are not the result of profound thought. Rather are they the result of hasty thought. This is attested by the rush from one party to another by the so-called independent voter, or the sudden dethronement of a public idol, or the restoration of a discarded hero to public popularity.

These quick changes in public sentiment have enlivened the history of all times. The poet Byron, in the beginning of his literary career, was praised by men and petted by women until the entire British nation was chanting adorations. Then, with the suddenness of a whirlwind, it turned against him and with furious persecution drove him into exile. The American hero of Manila Bay was escorted up Broadway by shouting thousands of admirers. Within a year he was no longer a hero. We resisted woman suffrage for scores of years and suddenly accepted it. This nation drank rum from its earliest beginnings and then with comparative suddenness changed the practice of centuries by declaring for prohibition.

The newspaper’s unconscious influence over the casual reader must be recognized. It is an instructive influence, usually, of wide scope, covering a multitude of topics that do not come to the reader’s attention in any other way than through the newspapers. Information does not get into the magazines or books until weeks or months after the event but the newspapers print it on the instant. The casual newspaper reader, for instance, reads that the new Roentgen ray has been discovered, by means of which the interior of an ordinarily opaque substance may be disclosed in photograph. He reads enough to establish that fact, but as soon as the description begins to become technical the casual reader abandons the article. Nevertheless he has absorbed the fact and a crude notion of the discovery and has added just so much to his fund of information. He may study it out if he chooses.

Again, there is no other quick source of information on new developments in politics, in finance, in the fluctuations of the commercial market prices.