Mr. Upton Sinclair, City:
Dear Sir:—The undersigned, correspondent of the Associated Press in Denver, agrees to send your telegram to President Wilson over its wires tonight.
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Mr. Rowsey read this letter and handed it back to me, with the smiling remark: “I see you are getting a good story.” I thanked him, and left. I went down-stairs to the telegraph-office and sent a copy of my telegram to President Wilson to a selection of newspapers all over the country. They were as follows: New York “Times,” “World,” “Herald,” “Sun” and “Call”; Chicago “Examiner” and “Tribune”; Philadelphia “North American” and “Press”; Baltimore “Sun”; Washington “Times”; Boston “Herald” and “Journal”; Topeka “Journal”; Kansas City “Star”; Milwaukee “Journal”; Atlanta “Georgian”; New Orleans “Times-Democrat”; Omaha “News”; Pittsburg “Post.”
Now, I submit that here is a definite test of the service of the Associated Press. Is it sending out all the material which its papers want? Is it suppressing anything which its papers would be glad to publish if they could get it? Let the reader observe that these newspapers are not merely radical and progressive ones; they include some of the staunchest stand-pat papers in the country, the New York “Times” and “Herald,” for example. They are all save two or three of them Associated Press papers. To make the test automatic I sent the telegrams “collect.” The editors had the right to read the message, and if they did not want it, to refuse to pay for it, having it sent back to me for collection. Out of the twenty papers, how many took this step? Only five! The other fifteen took the story that the Associated Press refused to send out. This is a remarkable showing, considering the fact that I sent the telegram late in the evening, and too late for most of the Eastern papers. It should be pointed out that a newspaper editor is far less disposed to print a dispatch which comes from an unauthorized person. My charge was a startling one, and an editor would naturally doubt it. He would say, “If it is true, why doesn’t the Associated Press send it?” Mr. Rowsey, in Denver, had the House Journal before him; but the city editors of newspapers all over the country did not have this advantage, and would naturally be disposed to rely upon Mr. Rowsey.
It might be worth while to add that the claims made in my two telegrams to President Wilson were fully vindicated by subsequent events. The committee of six machine legislators, appointed to collect material discreditable to the strikers and their leaders, proceeded to vindicate the Governor and redeem his reputation by going through a pretense of “mediation”; but the public paid so little attention to the farce that it petered out in two or three days. The strike lasted for another seven months, and all that time the Federal troops remained in the field—the very thing which President Wilson had declared himself determined to avoid, and which the coal-operators had been determined to force upon him!
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ITS NEWSPAPERS
I am giving a great deal of space in a small book to this one test of the Associated Press. I think that the subject is an important one, and that the documents in the case should be available to students. In the present chapter I give the reaction of the press of America to this particular test. If the reader is not interested in such details, he may skip this chapter.
I have talked over this case with many lawyers, and shown them the documents, and asked: “Is there any legal flaw in them?” They have never been able to point out one. Also I have talked the case over with journalists—some of the most eminent of capitalist journalists, as I shall presently narrate, and have asked them to point out a flaw. They have pointed out what they think is a flaw—that in presenting to the Associated Press my telegram to President Wilson, I was asking the Associated Press to give publicity to my name and personality, and the Associated Press might have been justified in refusing the request.
I answer that there were many ways in which the “A. P.” could have handled this matter without mentioning my name: a fact which I plainly pointed out to Mr. Rowsey. The first time I spoke to him—over the telephone—I was speaking, not for myself, but for Senator Robinson. She, a duly elected representative of the people of Colorado, speaking in their legislature, had nailed the Governor’s lie, and it was Mr. Rowsey’s unquestionable duty to report her words. It was only when I realized how completely the “A. P.” was in the hands of the coal-operators that I “butted in” on the matter at all. And when my telegram was refused by Mr. Rowsey, I was careful to point out to him that there were other ways he might handle this news. He might give the story as coming from Senator Robinson; he might send extracts from the editorial of the “Rocky Mountain News”; he might send a dispatch saying, “It is generally reported in Denver,” or “Protests are being made in Denver.” All this I made clear, and he in return made clear why he did not do so. Anyone who had been present at our long and partly humorous interview would have perceived that this was no error in judgment of an individual employe of the “A. P.,” but a definite policy of the great machine. Mr. Rowsey went so far as to say to me that he was a Socialist, in sympathy with my point of view, and that he personally would have been willing to send out a straight story.