The Free Press Part 2

Why was this doctrine originally what I have called it, "plausible and arguable"? At first sight it would seem to be neither the one nor the other.

A man controlling a newspaper can print any folly or falsehood he likes. _He_ is the dictator: not his public. _They_ only receive.

Yes: but he is limited by his public.

If I am rich enough to set up a big rotary printing press and print in a million copies of a daily paper the _news_ that the Pope has become a Methodist, or the _opinion_ that tin-tacks make a very good breakfast food, my newspaper containing such news and such an opinion would obviously not touch the general thought and will at all. No one, outside the small catholic minority, wants to hear about the Pope; and no one, Catholic or Muslim, will believe that he has become a Methodist. No one alive will consent to eat tin-tacks. A paper printing stuff like that is free to do so, the proprietor could certainly get his employees, or most of them, to write as he told them. But his paper would stop selling.

It is perfectly clear that the Press in itself simply represents the news which its owners desire to print and the opinions which they desire to propagate; and this argument against the Press has always been used by those who are opposed to its influence at any moment.

But there is no smoke without fire, and the element of truth in the legend that the Press "represents" opinion lies in this, that there is a _limit_ of outrageous contradiction to known truths beyond which it cannot go without heavy financial loss through failure of circulation, which is synonymous with failure of power. When people talked of the newspaper owners as "representing public opinion" there was a shadow of reality in such talk, absurd as it seems to us to-day. Though the doctrine that newspapers are "organs of public opinion" was (like most nineteenth century so-called "Liberal" doctrines) falsely stated and hypocritical, it had that element of truth about it--at least, in the earlier phase of newspaper development. There is even a certain savour of truth hanging about it to this day.

Newspapers are only offered for sale; the purchase of them is not (as yet) compulsorily enforced. A newspaper can, therefore, never succeed unless it prints news in which people are interested and on the nature of which they can be taken in. A newspaper can manufacture interest, but there are certain broad currents in human affairs which neither a newspaper proprietor nor any other human being can control. If England is at war no newspaper can boycott war news and live. If London were devastated by an earthquake no advertising power in the Insurance Companies nor any private interest of newspaper owners in real estate could prevent the thing "getting into the newspapers."

Indeed, until quite lately--say, until about the '80's or so--most news printed was really news about things which people wanted to understand. However garbled or truncated or falsified, it at least dealt with interesting matters which the newspaper proprietors had not started as a hare of their own, and which the public, as a whole, was determined to hear something about. Even to-day, apart from the war, there is a large element of this.

There was (and is) a further check upon the artificiality of the news side of the Press; which is that Reality always comes into its own at last.

You cannot, beyond a certain limit of time, burke reality.

In a word, the Press must always largely deal with what are called "living issues." It can _boycott_ very successfully, and does so, with complete power. But it cannot artificially create unlimitedly the objects of "news."

There is, then, this much truth in the old figment of the Press being "an organ of opinion," that it must in some degree (and that a large degree) present real matter for observation and debate. It can and does select. It can and does garble. But it has to do this always within certain limitations.

These limitations have, I think, already been reached; but that is a matter which I argue more fully later on.

VII

As to opinion, you have the same limitations.

If opinion can be once launched in spite of, or during the indifference of, the Press (and it is a big "if"); if there is no machinery for actually suppressing the mere statement of a doctrine clearly important to its readers--then the Press is bound sooner or later to deal with such doctrine: just as it is bound to deal with really vital news.

Here, again, we are dealing with something very different indeed from that t.i.tle "An organ of opinion" to which the large newspaper has in the past pretended. But I am arguing for the truth that the Press--in the sense of the great Capitalist newspapers--cannot be wholly divorced from opinion.

We have had three great examples of this in our own time in England.

Two proceeded from the small wealthy cla.s.s, and one from the ma.s.s of the people.

The two proceeding from the small wealthy cla.s.ses were the Fabian movement and the movement for Women's Suffrage. The one proceeding from the populace was the sudden, brief (and rapidly suppressed) insurrection of the working cla.s.ses against their masters in the matter of Chinese Labour in South Africa.

The Fabian movement, which was a drawing-room movement, compelled the discussion in the Press of Socialism, for and against. Although every effort was made to boycott the Socialist contention in the Press, the Fabians were at last strong enough to compel its discussion, and they have by now ca.n.a.lized the whole thing into the direction of their "Servile State." I myself am no more than middle-aged, but I can remember the time when popular newspapers such as "The Star" openly printed arguments in favour of Collectivism, and though to-day those arguments are never heard in the Press--largely because the Fabian Society has itself abandoned Collectivism in favour of forced labour--yet we may be certain that a Capitalist paper would not have discussed them at all, still less have supported them, unless it had been compelled. The newspapers simply _could_ not ignore Socialism at a time when Socialism still commanded a really strong body of opinion among the wealthy.

It was the same with the Suffrage for Women, which cry a clique of wealthy ladies got up in London. I have never myself quite understood why these wealthy ladies wanted such an absurdity as the modern franchise, or why they so blindly hated the Christian inst.i.tution of the Family. I suppose it was some perversion. But, anyhow, they displayed great sincerity, enthusiasm, and devotion, suffering many things for their cause, and acting in the only way which is at all practical in our plutocracy--to wit, by making their fellow-rich exceedingly uncomfortable. You may say that no one newspaper took up the cause, but, at least, it was not boycotted. It was actively discussed.

The little flash in the pan of Chinese Labour was, I think, even more remarkable. The Press not only had word from the twin Party Machines (with which it was then allied for the purposes of power) to boycott the Chinese Labour agitation rigidly, but it was manifestly to the interest of all the Capitalist Newspaper Proprietors to boycott it, and boycott it they did--as long as they could. But it was too much for them. They were swept off their feet. There were great meetings in the North-country which almost approached the dignity of popular action, and the Press at last not only took up the question for discussion, but apparently permitted itself a certain timid support.

My point is, then, that the idea of the Press as "an organ of public opinion," that is, "an expression of the general thought and will," is not _only_ hypocritical, though it is _mainly_ so. There is still something in the claim. A generation ago there was more, and a couple of generations ago there was more still.

Even to-day, if a large paper went right against the national will in the matter of the present war it would be ruined, and papers which supported in 1914 the Cabinet intrigue to abandon our Allies at the beginning of the war have long since been compelled to eat their words.

For the strength of a newspaper owner lies in his power to deceive the public and to withhold or to publish at will hidden things: his power in this terrifies the professional politicians who hold nominal authority: in a word, the newspaper owner controls the professional politician because he can and does blackmail the professional politician, especially upon his private life. But if he does not command a large public this power to blackmail does not exist; and he can only command a large public--that is, a large circulation--by interesting that public and even by flattering it that it has its opinions reflected--not created--for it.

The power of the Press is not a direct and open power. It depends upon a trick of deception; and no trick of deception works if the trickster pa.s.ses a certain degree of cynicism.

We must, therefore, guard ourselves against the conception that the great modern Capitalist Press is _merely_ a channel for the propagation of such news as may suit its proprietors, or of such opinions as they hold or desire to see held. Such a judgment would be fanatical, and therefore worthless.

Our interest is in the _degree_ to which news can be suppressed or garbled, particular discussion of interest to the common-weal suppressed, spontaneous opinion boycotted, and artificial opinion produced.

VIII

I say that our interest lies in the question of degree. It always does. The philosopher said: "All things are a matter of degree; and who shall establish degree?" But I think we are agreed--and by "we" I mean all educated men with some knowledge of the world around us--that the degree to which the suppression of truth, the propagation of falsehood, the artificial creation of opinion, and the boycott of inconvenient doctrine have reached in the great Capitalist Press for some time past in England, is at least dangerously high.

There is no one in public life but could give dozens of examples from his own experience of perfectly sensible letters to the Press, citing irrefutable testimony upon matters of the first importance, being refused publicity. Within the guild of the journalists, there is not a man who could not give you a hundred examples of deliberate suppression and deliberate falsehood by his employers both as regards news important to the nation and as regards great bodies of opinion.

Equally significant with the mere vast numerical acc.u.mulation of such instances is their quality.

Let me give a few examples. No straightforward, common-sense, _real_ description of any professional politician--his manners, capacities, way of speaking, intelligence--ever appears to-day in any of the great papers. We never have anything within a thousand miles of what men who meet them _say_.

We are, indeed, long past the time when the professional politicians were treated as revered beings of whom an inept ritual description had to be given. But the subst.i.tute has only been a putting of them into the limelight in another and more grotesque fas.h.i.+on, far less dignified, and quite equally false.

We cannot even say that the professional politicians are still made to "fill the stage." That metaphor is false, because upon a stage the audience knows that it is all play-acting, and actually _sees_ the figures.

Let any man of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary professional politicians is speaking.

It would not be an exciting description. The truth here would not be a violent or dangerous truth. Let him but write soberly and with truth.

Let him write it as private letters are daily written in dozens about such folk, or as private conversation runs among those who know them, and who have no reason to exaggerate their importance, but see them as they are. Such a description would never be printed! The few owners of the Press will not turn off the limelight and make a brief, accurate statement about these mediocrities, because their power to govern depends upon keeping in the limelight the men whom they control.

Once let the public know what sort of mediocrities the politicians are and they lose power. Once let them lose power and their hidden masters lose power.

Take a larger instance: the middle and upper cla.s.ses are never allowed by any chance to hear in time the dispute which leads to a strike or a lock-out.

Here is an example of news which is of the utmost possible importance to the commonwealth, and to each of us individually. To understand _why_ a vast domestic dispute has arisen is the very first necessity for a sound civic judgment. But we never get it. The event always comes upon us with violence and is always completely misunderstood--because the Press has boycotted the men's claims.

I talked to dozens of people in my own station of life--that is, of the professional middle cla.s.ses--about the great building lock-out which coincided with the outbreak of the War. _I did not find a single one who knew that it was a lock-out at all!_ The few who did at least know the difference between a strike and a lock-out, _all_ thought it was a strike!

Let no one say that the disgusting falsehoods spread by the Press in this respect were of no effect The men themselves gave in, and their perfectly just demands were defeated, mainly because middle-cla.s.s opinion _and a great deal of proletarian opinion as well_ had been led to believe that the builders' cessation of labour was a _strike_ due to their own initiative against existing conditions, and thought the operation of such an initiative immoral in time of war. They did not know the plain truth that the provocation was the masters', and that the men were turned out of employment, that is deprived of access to the Capitalist stores of food and all other necessaries, wantonly and avariciously by the masters. The Press would not print that enormous truth.

I will give another general example.

The whole of England was concerned during the second year of the War with the first rise in the price of food. There was no man so rich but he had noticed it in his household books, and for nine families out of ten it was the one pre-occupation of the moment. I do not say the great newspapers did not deal with it, but _how_ did they deal with it? With a ma.s.s advocacy in favour of this professional politician or that; with a ma.s.s of unco-ordinated advices; and, above all, with a ma.s.s of nonsense about the immense earnings of the proletariat. The whole thing was really and deliberately side-tracked for months until, by the mere force of things, it compelled attention. Each of us is a witness to this. We have all seen it. Every single reader of these lines knows that my indictment is true. Not a journalist of the hundreds who were writing the falsehood or the rubbish at the dictation of his employer but had felt the strain upon the little weekly cheque which was his _own_ wage. Yet this enormous national thing was at first not dealt with at all in the Press, and, when dealt with, was falsified out of recognition.

I could give any number of other, and, perhaps, minor instances as the times go (but still enormous instances as older morals went) of the same thing. They have shown the incapacity and falsehood of the great capitalist newspapers during these few months of white-hot crisis in the fate of England.