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.