Part 3 (1/2)

(_September_, 1883)

NEWSPAPER ETHICS

I

Newspaper manners and morals hardly fall into the category of minor manners and morals, which are supposed to be the especial care of the Easy Chair, but there are frequent texts upon which the preacher might dilate, and push a discourse upon the subject even to the fifteenthly. Indeed, in this hot time of an opening election campaign, the stress of the contest is so severe that the first condition of a good newspaper is sometimes frightfully maltreated. The first duty of a newspaper is to tell the news; to tell it fairly, honestly, and accurately, which are here only differing aspects of the same adverb. ”Cooking the news” is the worst use to which cooking and news can be put. The old divine spoke truly, if with exceeding care, in saying, ”It has been sometimes observed that men will lie.” So it has been sometimes suspected that newspapers will cook the news.

A courteous interviewer called upon a gentleman to obtain his opinions, let us say, upon the smelt fishery. After the usual civilities upon such occasions, the interviewer remarked, with conscious pride: ”The paper that I represent and you, sir, do not agree upon the great smelt question. But it is a newspaper. It prints the facts. It does not pervert them for its own purpose, and it finds its account in it. You may be sure that whatever you may say will be reproduced exactly as you say it. This is the news department. Meanwhile the editorial department will make such comments upon the news as it chooses.” This was fair, and the interviewer kept his word.

The opinions might be editorially ridiculed from the other smelt point of view, and they probably were so. But the reader of the paper could judge between the opinion and the comment.

Now an interview is no more news than much else that is printed in a paper, and it is no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same proceedings of--of--let us say, as this is election time--of a political convention. The _Banner_ informs us that the spirit was unmistakable, and the opinion most decided in favor of Jones. True, the convention voted, by nine hundred to four, for Smith, but there is no doubt that Jones is the name written on the popular heart. The _Standard_, on the other hand, proclaims that the popular heart is engraved all over with the inspiring name of Smith, and that it is impossible to find any trace of feeling for Jones, except, possibly, in the case of one delegate, who is probably an idiot or a lunatic. This is gravely served up as news, and the papers pay for it. They even hire men to write this, and pay them for it. How Ude and Careme would have disdained this kind of cookery! It is questionable whether hanging is not a better use to put a man to than cooking news. Sir Henry Wotton defined an amba.s.sador as an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. This kind of purveyor, however, does not lie for his country, but for a party or a person.

It is done with a purpose, the purpose of influencing other action. It is intended to swell the paean for Jones or for Smith, and to procure results under false pretences. Procuring goods under false pretences is a crime, but everybody is supposed to read the newspapers at his own risk. Has the reader yet to learn that newspapers are very human? A paper, for instance, takes a position upon the Jones or Smith question. It decides, upon all the information it can obtain, and by its own deliberate judgment, that Jones is the coming man, or (”it has been observed that men will sometimes lie”) it has illicit reasons for the success of Smith. Having thus taken its course, it cooks all the news upon the Smith and Jones controversy, in order that by encouraging the Jonesites or the Smithians, according to the color that it wears, it may promote the success of the side upon which its opinion has been staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, but it is certainly not the honest collection and diffusion of news. It is a losing game also, because, whatever the sympathies of the reader, he does not care to be foolishly deceived about the situation. If he is told day after day that Smith is immensely ahead and has a clear field, he is terribly shaken by the shock of learning at the final moment that he has been cheated from the beginning, and that poor Smith is dead upon the field of dishonor.

Everybody is willing to undertake everybody else's business, and an Easy Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that it could show the able editor a plan of securing and retaining a large audience. The plan would be that described by the urbane reporter as the plan of his own paper. It is nothing else than truth-telling in the news column, and the peremptory punishment of all criminals who cook the news, and ”write up” the situation, not as it is, but as the paper wishes it to be. This is more than an affair of the private wishes or preferences of the paper. To cook the news is a public wrong, and a violation of the moral contract which the newspaper makes with the public to supply the news, and to use every reasonable effort to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either in the office or by correspondence.

(_July_, 1880)

II

If, as a New York paper recently said, the journalist is superseding the orator, it is full time for the work upon _Journals and Journalism_, which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in our political contests the ”campaign speech” is not intended or adapted to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of partisans, and the more extravagant the a.s.sertion and the more unsparing the denunciation of ”the enemy,” the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to party feeling. ”Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid” is the Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech.

As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment, the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision.

But this, the journalist a.s.serts, is not done by the orator, for the reason just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper, also, unless it be a mere party ”organ,” is candid to the other side, and states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and of great s.p.a.ce to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and ample plea, and the orator, it is a.s.serted, would often serve his cause infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by pouring out his loose and illogical declamation.

But the argument for the newspaper can be pushed still further. Since phonographic reporting has become universal, and the speaker is conscious that his very words will be spread the next morning before hundreds of thousands of readers, it is of those readers, and not of the thousand hearers before him, of whom he thinks, and for whom his address is really prepared. Formerly a single charge was all that was needed for the fusillade of a whole political campaign. The speech that was originally carefully prepared was known practically only to the audience that heard it. It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery, and was fresh and new to every new audience. But now, when delivered to an audience, it is spoken to the whole country. It is often in type before it is uttered, so that the orator is in fact repeating the article of to-morrow morning. The result is good so far as it compels him to precision of statement, but it inevitably suggests the question whether the newspaper is not correct in its a.s.sertion that the great object of the oration is accomplished not by the orator, but by the writer.

But this, after all, is like asking whether a chromo copy of a great picture does not supersede painting, and prove it to be an antiquated or obsolete art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar charm and power cannot be superseded by any other art. Great orations are now prepared with care, and may be printed word for word. But the reading cannot produce the impression of the hearing. We can all read the words that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument fifty years after the battle. But those who saw him standing there, in his majestic prime, and speaking to that vast throng, heard and saw and felt something that we cannot know. The ordinary stump speech which imperfectly echoes a leading article can well be spared. But the speech of an orator still remains a work of art, the words of which may be accurately lithographed, while the spirit and glow and inspiration of utterance which made it a work of art cannot be reproduced.

The general statement of the critic, however, remains true, and the effective work of a political campaign is certainly done by the newspaper.

The newspaper is of two kinds, again--that which shows exclusively the virtue and advantage of the party it favors, and that which aims to be judicial and impartial. The tendency of the first kind is obvious enough, but that of the last is not less positive if less obvious. The tendency of the independent newspaper is to good-natured indifference. The very ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, with which a side is advocated, prejudices such a paper against the cause itself. Because the hot orator exclaims that the success of the adversary would ruin the country, the independent Mentor gayly suggests that the country is not so easily ruined, and that such an argument is a reason for voting against the orator. The position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction, which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and partiality of the party advocate. Thorough independence is perfectly compatible with the strongest conviction that the public welfare will be best promoted by the success of this or that party. Such independence criticises its own party and partisans, but it would not have wavered in the support of the Revolution because Gates and Conway were intriguers, and Charles Lee an adventurer, and it would have sustained Sir Robert Walpole although he would not repeal the Corporation and Test laws, and withdrew his excise act.

Journalism, if it be true that it really shapes the policy of nations, well deserves to be treated as thoughtfully as Mr. ”John Oldcastle” apparently treats it in the book we have mentioned, for it is the most exacting of professions in the ready use of various knowledge. Mr. Anthony Trollope says that anybody can set up the business or profession of literature who can command a room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. Would he also say that any man may set up the trade of an artist who can buy an easel, a palette, a few brushes, and some colors? It can be done, indeed, but only as a man who can hire a boat may set up for an East India merchant.

(_December_, 1880)

III

”If you find that you have no case,” the old lawyer is reported to have said to the young, ”abuse the plaintiff's attorney,” and Judge Martin Grover, of New York, used to say that it was apparently a great relief to a lawyer who had lost a case to betake himself to the nearest tavern and swear at the court. Abuse, in any event, seems to have been regarded by both of these authorities as a consolation in defeat. It is but carrying the theory a step further to resort to abuse in argument. Timon, who is a club cynic--which is perhaps the most useless specimen of humanity--says that 'pon his honor nothing entertains him more than to see how little argument goes to the discussion of any question, and how immediate is the recourse to blackguardism. ”The other day,” he said, recently, ”I was sitting in the smoking-room, and Blunt and Sharp began to talk about yachts. Sharp thinks that he knows all that can be known of yachts, and Blunt thinks that what he thinks is unqualified truth. Sharp made a strong a.s.sertion, and Blunt smiled. It was that lofty smile of amused pity and superiority, which is, I suppose, very exasperating. Sharp was evidently surprised, but he continued, and at another observation Blunt looked at him, and said, simply, 'Ridiculous!' As it seemed to me,” said Timon, ”the stronger and truer were the remarks of Sharp, the more Blunt's tone changed from contempt to anger, until he came to a torrent of vituperation, under which Sharp retired from the room with dignity.

”I presume,” said the cynic, ”that Sharp was correct upon every point.

But the more correct Sharp was, the more angry Blunt became. It was very entertaining, and it seems to me very much the way of more serious discussion.” Timon was certainly right, and those who heard his remarks, and have since then seen him chuckling over the newspapers, are confident it is because he observes in them the same method of carrying on discussion. Much public debate recalls the two barbaric methods of warfare, which consist in making a loud noise and in emitting vile odors. A member of Congress pours out a flood of denunciatory words in the utmost rhetorical confusion, and seems to suppose that he has dismayed his opponent because he has made a tremendous noise. He is only an overgrown boy, who, like some other boys, imagines that he is very heroic when he shakes his head, and pouts his lip, and clinches his fist, and ”calls names” in a shrill and rasping tone. Other members, who ought to know better, pretend to regard his performances as worthy of applause, and metaphorically pat him on the back and cry, ”St, boy!” They only share--and in a greater degree, because they know better--the contempt with which he is regarded.

In the same way a newspaper writer attacks views which are not acceptable to him, not with argument, or satire, or wit, or direct refutation, but by metaphorically emptying slops, and directing whirlwinds of bad smells upon their supporters. The intention seems to be, not to confute the arguments, but to disgust the advocates. The proceeding is a confession that the views are so evidently correct that they will inevitably prevail unless their supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rect.i.tude a man may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If he recoils, the enemy laughs in triumph; if he is indifferent, there is a fresh whirlwind.

A public man wrote recently to a friend that he had seen an attack upon his conduct in a great journal, and had asked his lawyer to take the necessary legal steps to bring the offender to justice. His friend replied that he had seen the attack, but that it had no more effect upon him than the smells from Newtown Creek. They were very disgusting, but that was all.