Naturally the press, like other institutions which present facts or opinions, is restricted, often unconsciously, sometimes consciously, by various controlling conditions. Certain people talk of the censorship enacted by the prejudices and predispositions of the public itself. Some, such as Upton Sinclair, ascribe to the advertisers a conscious and powerful control of publications. Others, like Walter Lippmann, find that an effective barrier between the public and the event exists in the powerful influence which, he says, is exerted in certain cases on the press by the so-called quality public which the newspapers’ advertisers wish to reach and among whom the newspapers must circulate if the advertising is to be successful. Mr. Lippmann observes that although such a restriction may exist, much of what may be attributed to censorship in the newspaper, often is actually inadequate presentation of the events it seeks to describe.
On this point he says:[7] “It follows that in the reporting of strikes, the easiest way is to let the news be uncovered by the overt act, and to describe the event as the story of interference with the reader’s life. This is where his attention is first aroused and his interest most easily enlisted. A great deal, I think myself, of the crucial part of what looks to the worker and the reformer as deliberate misrepresentation on the part of newspapers, is the direct outcome of a practical difficulty in uncovering the news, and the emotional difficulty of making distinct facts interesting unless, as Emerson says, we can ‘perceive’ (them) and can ‘set about translating (them) at once into parallel facts.’”
In view then of the possibility of a malleable public opinion the counsel on public relations, desiring to obtain a hearing for any given cause, simply utilizes existent channels to obtain expression for the point of view he represents. How this is done will be considered later.
Because of the importance of channels of thought communication, it is vital for the public relations counsel to study carefully the relationship between public opinion and the organs that maintain it or that influence it to change. We shall look into this interaction and its effect in the next chapter.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION WITH THE FORCES THAT HELP TO MAKE IT
The public and the press, or for that matter, the public and any force that modifies public opinion, interact. Action and interaction are continually going on between the forces projected out to the public and the public itself. The public relations counsel must understand this fact in its broadest and most detailed implications. He must understand not only what these various forces are, but he must be able to evaluate their relative powers with fair accuracy. Let us consider again the case of a newspaper, as representative of other mediums of communication.
“We print,” says the New York Times, “all the news that’s fit to print.” Immediately the question arises (as Elmer Davis, the historian of the Times tells us that it did when the motto was first adopted) what news is fit to print? By what standard is the editorial decision reached which includes one kind of news and excludes another kind? The Times itself has not been, in its long and conspicuously successful career, entirely free from difficulties on this point.
Thus in “The History of The New York Times,” Mr. Davis feels the need for justifying the extent to which that paper featured Theodore Tilton’s action against the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher for alienation of Mrs. Tilton’s affections and his conduct with her. Mr. Davis says (pages 124-125): “No doubt a good many readers of the Times thought that the paper was giving an undue amount of space to this chronicle of sin and suffering. Those complaints come in often enough even in these days from readers who appreciate the paper’s general reluctance to display news of this sort, and wonder why a good general rule should occasionally be violated. But there was a reason in the Beecher case, as there has usually been a reason in similar affairs since. Dr. Beecher was one of the most prominent clergymen in the country; there was a natural curiosity as to whether he was practicing what he preached. One of the counsel at the trial declared that ‘all Christendom was hanging on its outcome.’ Full reporting of its course was not a mere pandering to vulgar curiosity, but a recognition of the value of the case as news.”
The simple fact that such a slogan can exist and be accepted is for our purpose an important point. Somewhere there must be a standard to which the editors of the Times can conform, as well as a large clientele of constant readers to whom that standard is satisfactory. “Fit” must be defined by the editors of the Times in a way which meets with the approval of enough persons to enable the paper to maintain its reading public. As soon, however, as the definition is attempted, difficulties arise.