The positive corruption of the newspaper by the advertiser goes deeper and proceeds from larger economic powers than individual merchants. There is all over the world a terrific economic contest between the employing classes and the wage-earning classes. The dramatic manifestation of this contest is the strike. Almost invariably the news of a strike is, if not falsified, so shaped as to be unfavourable to the workers. In the New York Nation of January 5, 1921, Mr. Charles G. Miller, formerly editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, exposes the lies of the Pittsburgh papers during the steel strike. In two weeks the Pittsburgh papers published more than thirty pages of paid advertisements denouncing the leadership of the strike and invoking “Americanism” against radicalism and syndicalism. The news and editorial attitude of the papers coincided with the advertisements and gave the impression that the strikers were disloyal, un-American, bolshevik. They were silent on the real questions at issue, hours, pay, working conditions. And not only the Pittsburgh press but the press of the entire country was poisoned. For the Associated Press and other news services are not independent organizations feeding news to their clients but simply interrelated newspapers swapping each other’s lies. The Denver newspapers control all the news that is read in Boston about the Colorado coal mines. The Boston newspapers control all the news that is read in San Francisco about the New England textile mills. The head of a local bureau of the Associated Press is not a reporter; he is merely a more or less skilful compiler and extracter who sends to the nation, to the whole world, matter which is furnished him by the papers of his district. So that he can usually hold up his hand and swear to the honesty of his service; he is like an express agent who ships a case of what he thinks is canned corn, and it is not his fault if there is opium concealed in the case.
The power of the advertiser to make the newspaper servile and right in its opinions is not confined to the local department store or the special industry operating through a district press. Nor is it confined to the negative punishment of withdrawing advertising of commodities like hosiery, chewing gum, and banking service from papers that offend their masters. There is another method of exerting this power, and that is to buy advertising space in which to set forth ideas calculated to influence public opinion. Here is a full page from a New York paper containing a cartoon and text, the main idea of which is that Labour and Capital should pull together. It is signed by “‘America First’ Publicity Association” and is Bulletin No. 115 in a series—“be sure to read them all.” This full-page bulletin, of which there have already been more than a hundred, appeared in many newspapers—I do not know how many; and a full page costs a good deal of money. What is the object of this patriotic association? The prevailing theme of the bulletins which I have seen is “Labour be good! Fight Bolshevism! Beware the Agitator!” Who is going to be influenced by these bulletins? Not the workingman. He knows what he wants, and if he is the dupe of agitators and false theories, these sermons can never rescue him. Not the capitalist. He knows what he wants, and gets it. Perhaps the little middle-class fellow may swallow such buncombe on his daily journey between his office and his home in the suburbs. But he is already an intellectually depraved servant of the employing classes, and it is not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete and confirm his corruption. The primary object of the advertisement is to keep the newspaper “good,” to encourage its editorial departments, through the advertising department, not to fall below 99 and 44/100% pure Americanism or admit ideas inimical to the general interests of chambers of commerce, manufacturers’ associations, and other custodians of the commonweal. I suspect that some clever advertising man has stung the gentlemen who supply the money for this campaign of education, but what is a few million to them? The man who can best afford to laugh is the business manager of the newspaper when he looks at the check and meditates on the easy money of some of his advertising clients and the easy credulity of some of his reading clients.
It may be argued that the newspaper, which is a business, ought to be controlled, directly and indirectly, by business interests; and certainly if we allow the commercial powers to manage our food supply, transportation, and housing, it is a relatively minor matter if the same powers dominate our press. In like manner if we tolerate dishonest governments, we are only dealing with an epiphenomenon when we consider the dishonest and inefficient treatment by the press of public affairs, national and international. All the news of politics, diplomacy, war, world-trade emanates from government officials or from those who are interested in turning to their own advantage the actions of officials. Business is behind government, and government is behind business; which comes first is unimportant like the problem of the chicken and the egg. It is a partnership of swindle, and though the details of the relation are infinitely complicated, the relation in itself is easy to understand and accounts quite simply for the fact that world news is the most viciously polluted of all the many kinds of news. The efforts of a merchant to keep up the good name of his department store, or of a group of manufacturers to break a strike are feeble and even reasonable, so far as they use the newspapers, compared to the audacious perversion of truth by the combination of arch criminals, government and international business.
The star example in modern times is the current newspaper history of Russia. The New York Nation of March 6, 1920, published an article showing that in the columns of the New York Times Lenin had died once, been almost killed three times, and had fallen and fled innumerable times. The New Republic published August 4, 1920, a supplement by Lippmann and Merz summarizing the news which the Times printed about Russia during the three years preceding March 1920. The analysis shows an almost unbroken daily misrepresentation of the programme, purposes and strength of the Russian government and continuous false “optimism,” as the writers gently call it, about the military exploits of Russia’s enemies, the “white hopes,” Kolchak and Denekin. The writers expressly state that they did not select the Times because it is worse than other papers but, on the contrary, because it “is one of the really great newspapers of the world.” “Rich” or “powerful” would have been a better word than “great.” The sources of error in the Times were the Associated Press, the special correspondents of the Times, government officials and political factions hostile to the present Russian régime. Among the offenders was the United States Government or the journalistic fake-factory in or adjacent to the Department of State. At this writing the article in the New Republic has been out nearly a year, that in the Nation more than a year. It is fair to assume that they have been seen by the managers of the Times and other powerful journalists, that if there was any misstatement the weekly journals would have been forced to recant, which they have not done, and that if the Ochses of the newspaper world had any conscience they would have been at least more careful after such devastating exposures. But the game of “Lying about Lenin” goes merrily on.
The American government and the American press have not been more mendacious in their treatment of Russia than the governments and the press of other nations, but they have been more persistently stupid and unteachable in the face of facts. The British government has been engaged in an agile zigzag retreat from its first position of no intercourse with Russia, and when the London Labour Herald exposed the trick of Lloyd George which consisted of printing and sending out from Russia propaganda against the Soviet government, the prince of political liars was obliged to stop that fraud. On the other hand one of the first acts of our new administration was Mr. Hughes’s idiotic confirmation of the attitude held by the old administration, and he furnished the newspapers real news, since the Secretary’s opinions, however stupid, are real news, to add to their previous accumulation of ignorance and lies, and thereby encouraged them in their evil ways. If a government is composed of noodles and rogues, the press which reports the activities of the government and the opinions of its officials is only secondarily responsible for deceiving the public. The editors might be more critical in sifting the true from the false. But the newspaper has no motive for trying to correct the inherent vices of business and government; it does not originate those vices but merely concurs in them and reflects them. The newspaper is primarily responsible only for the stupidity and mendacity of its correspondents and editors. It is not an independent institution with its own ethic, with either will or full opportunity to serve the truth, but is only the symptom and expression of the vast corruption that lies behind it and of the dense popular ignorance that stands gaping before it.
The Dunciad of the Press does not end in quite universal darkness. There is a little light over the horizon. A new organization called The Federated Press, which endeavours to “get the news in spite of the newspapers and the great news agencies,” announces that already two hundred editors all over the world are using its service. It is too soon to tell how successful this enterprise will be, but it is a ray of promise, because it is an association of working journalists and not a vague aspiration of reformers and uplifters. Until some such organization does become powerful and by practical labour make an impression on the daily paper, we shall have to depend for enlightenment on a few weekly and monthly periodicals of relatively small circulation. Most of the popular weeklies and monthlies are as bad in their way as the newspapers, but they aim chiefly at entertainment; their treatment of the news in special articles and editorials is a subordinate matter, and their chief sin is not dishonesty but banality. The periodicals which do handle the news, always honestly, usually with intelligence, the Nation, the New Republic, the Freeman and one or two others, must have an influence greater than can be measured by their circulation; for though the giant press laughs at the cranky little Davids with their vicious radical ideas, and though it is too strong to be slain or even severely wounded, yet it cannot be quite insensible to the stones that fly from those valorous slings. It is, however, an indication of the low mental level of America that the combined circulation of these journals, which are, moreover, largely subscribed for by the same readers, is less than that of a newspaper in a second-rate city. Two of them are endowed or subsidized by liberal men of means and none of them is shiningly prosperous. An intelligent populace would buy them by the million. So we leave the responsibility where, after all, it belongs. The American press is an accurate gauge of the American mind.
John Macy
THE LAW
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This outcry of Jack Cade’s followers that the disappearance of the whole profession was the initial step in man’s progress toward a better world would be echoed in the United States by the revolutionists of to-day, and also by not a few solid business men who have nothing else in common with the mediæval agitator except perhaps the desire to see the fountains run wine and make it a felony to drink near-beer. Indeed almost every one takes his fling at the law. Doctors and ministers can be avoided if we dislike them, but the judge has a sure grip upon us all. He drags us before him against our will; no power in the land can overturn his decision, but defeated litigants, disappointed sociologists, and unsuccessful primary candidates all join in a prolonged yell, “Kill the umpire.”
Where there is smoke, there is fire. Underneath all this agitation is a deep-seated suspicion and dissatisfaction aroused by the legal profession and the whole machinery of justice. It exists despite the fact observed by Bryce, that our system of written constitutions has created a strongly marked legal spirit in the people and accustomed them to look at all questions in a legal way—a characteristic exemplified when other peoples judged the Covenant of the League of Nations as an expression of broad policies and the aspirations of a hundred years, while we went at it word by word with a dissecting knife and a microscope as if it had been a millionaire’s will or an Income Tax Act. Moreover, although lawyers as a class are unpopular, they are elected to half the seats in the legislatures and in Congress. The profession which cannot boast a single English Prime Minister in the century between Perceval and Asquith, has trained every President who was not a general, except Harding. Perhaps this very fact that lawyers receive public positions out of all proportion to their numbers partially accounts for the prejudice felt against them by men in other professions and occupations.