The Free Press | Page 7

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 title "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 class, and one from the mass of the people.
The two proceeding from the small wealthy classes 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 classes 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 canalized 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