“Yes. If you’re buying or selling stocks or socks, it doesn’t matter. The principles you live by aren’t involved. In the newspaper game they are.”
“Not in reporting, though.”
“If reporting were just gathering facts and presenting them, it wouldn’t be so. But you’re deep enough in by now to see that reporting of a lot of things is a matter of coloring your version to the general policy of your paper. Politics, for instance, or the liquor question, or labor troubles. The best reporters get to doing it unconsciously. Chameleons.”
“And you think it affects them?”
“How can it help? There’s a slow poison in writing one way when you believe another.”
“And that’s part of the dirt-eating?”
“Well, yes. Not so obvious as some of the other kinds. Those hurt your pride, mostly. This kind hurts your self-respect.”
“But where does it get you, all this business?” asked Banneker reverting to his first query.
“I’m fifty-two years old,” replied Edmonds quietly.
Banneker stared. “Oh, I see!” he said presently. “And you’re considered a success. Of course you are a success.”