You guess that this chapter will show how the press exploits crime for its profit; and that sounds tiresome, you know all about that. You know how the yellow journals take up murder cases and divorce cases and sexual irregularities, and carry on campaigns of scandal, lasting for months. You know how they send out their amateur sleuths, and work up a case against some one, and make it a matter of journalistic prestige that this person shall be hounded to jail.
No; this chapter does not deal with the crimes which the press exploits, nor yet with the crimes which it invents. I could tell a hilarious anecdote of a group of New York reporters assigned to the immigration service, shy of news and bored to death, who cooked up a tale of an imaginary murder by an imaginary Austrian countess, kept all New York thrilled for a week, and “got away with it.” But all that is comparatively nothing. The theme of this chapter is the crimes which the press commits.
What is a crime? The definition is difficult; you have to know first who commits it. Many things are crimes if done by workingmen, which are virtuous public services if done by great corporations. It is a crime when workingmen conspire to boycott; but it is no crime when newspapers do it, when advertisers do it. It is a crime when an individual threatens blackmail; but when a great newspaper does it, it is business enterprise. For example, in Los Angeles there was started a municipal newspaper, which was thriving. Gen. Harrison Gray Otis of the “Times” sent agents to various advertisers to notify them that if they continued to advertise in this paper they would be boycotted, blacklisted, and put out of business. So the big advertisers deserted the municipal paper.
I have told in this book about many crimes committed by newspapers against myself; not metaphorical crimes, but literal, legal crimes. It was a crime when a Philadelphia reporter broke into my home and stole a photograph. It was a crime when the “New York Evening Journal” sent forged cablegrams to Dr. James P. Warbasse and Mrs. Jessica Finch Cosgrave. It was a crime when the newspapers of New York bribed a court-clerk to give them the testimony in my divorce case. Any lawyer will tell you that these things are crimes, yet they are a recognized part of the practice of American Journalism, and follow logically and inevitably from the competitive sale of news.
Nietzsche says of the soul of man that it “hungers after knowledge as the lion for his food.” Just so the yellow journals hunger after news, and just so their proprietors hunger after profits. When profits are at stake, they stop at nothing. I have quoted Hearst’s telegram to Frederick Remington: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.” I have told of Hearst’s ruffian conduct towards myself in the case of Adelaide Branch. Do you think that a man who would commit such acts would stop at anything? When Hearst ventured to run for governor of New York State, his enemies brought out against him a mass of evidence, showing that he had deliberately organized his newspapers so that the corporations which published them owned no property, and children who had been run down and crippled for life by Mr. Hearst’s delivery-wagons could collect no damages from him.
Mr. Hearst poses as a friend of labor, but he keeps his newspapers on a non-union basis, and when his employes go on strike, he treats them as other corporations treat their strikers. And all newspaper corporations do the same. I could name not one, but several cities in which newspapers have hired thugs to break the strikes of newsboys; or where they have hired strikes against their rivals. During the Colorado coal-strike the “Denver Express” was publishing the truth about the strike, and the other newspapers organized a boycott of the dealers who handled the “Express.” When the “Express” hired its own newsboys, mysterious gangs of rowdies appeared, and beat up these newsboys and scattered their papers in the streets. And no interference from the police, no line about these riots in any Denver newspaper—except the “Express,” which could not get distributed!
Wherever you dig in the cellars of these great predatory institutions, you find buried skeletons. I have dragged some of them into the light of day; I would drag others—but the test here is not what I know to be true, but what I can prove in a court of law. And it is so easy for a great newspaper to buy witnesses; so easy for a great newspaper to terrorize witnesses! I came upon one typical story that I could prove, and prove to the hilt; I prepared to tell the story, with names and places and dates, but while I was collecting the evidence, a friend of the victim exclaimed: “You will ruin him! You will set the newspaper after him again!”
This man, a former city official, an honest public servant, had been deliberately ruined by a newspaper conspiracy, and brought to utter despair. The thing happened six years ago, and only now is he beginning to recover his practice as a lawyer. If now I revive this story, he will take up his morning paper and read something like this: “The defendant was represented by John Jones, who a few years ago was indicted—etc.” Or: “The striking carpenters have retained John Jones, who was once city prosecutor, and concerning whom several witnesses testified—etc., etc.” Shall I inflict this upon a man, in spite of his wishes? I thought the matter over from many angles, and decided to ask the reader to accept the story on my word. Really, it is too incredible a story to be an invention! Listen:
John Jones, city prosecutor, caused the arrest of the proprietor of a great and powerful newspaper for printing salacious advertisements. He forced this newspaper to make abject public apology, and to promise reform. Later he caused the arrest of the proprietor for criminal libel; whereupon this proprietor set out to “get” the city prosecutor. The paper had a “literary editor,” a man who has since become well-known as a critic and novelist, author of perhaps a dozen books. At this time his salary was thirty dollars a week, and he was told by the proprietor of the newspaper to go and “get” John Jones, using either wine or women.
A woman was brought on from the Middle West, a woman just one month under twenty-one, which is the “age of consent” in the state in question. This woman sought a city position from John Jones, came to his office, threw her arms about his neck, and screamed. Instantly the door was broken in, and it was made known that “sleuths” had bored a hole through the office-wall, and were prepared to testify that they had seen John Jones committing a crime with this woman under age.