Part 6 (1/2)

The princ.i.p.al characteristics of American journalism may be summed up in the word ”enterprise.” No one on earth is more fertile in expedients than an American editor, kept constantly to the collar by a sense of competing energies all around him. No trouble, or expense, or contrivance is spared in the collection of news; scarcely any item of interest is overlooked by the army of alert reporters day and night in the field. The old-world papers do not compete with those of the new in the matter of _quant.i.ty_ of news. But just here comes in one of the chief faults of the American journal, one of the besetting sins of the American people,--their well-known love of ”bigness,” their tendency to ask ”How much?” rather than ”Of what kind?” There is a lack of discrimination in the daily bill of fare served up by the American press that cannot but disgust the refined and tutored palate. It is only the boor who demands a savoury and a roast of equal bulk; it is only the vulgarian who wishes as much of his paper occupied by brutal prize-fights or vapid ”personals” as by important political information or literary criticism. There is undoubtedly a modic.u.m of truth in Matthew Arnold's sneer that American journals certainly supply news enough--but it is the news of the servants' hall. It is as if the helm were held rather by the active reporter than by the able editor. It is said that while there are eight editors to one reporter in Denmark, the proportion is exactly reversed in the United States.

The net of the ordinary American editor is at least as indiscriminating as that of the German historiographer: every detail is swept in, irrespective of its intrinsic value. The very end for which the newspaper avowedly exists is often defeated by the impossibility of finding out what is the important news of the day. The reporter prides himself on being able to ”write up” the most intrinsically uninteresting and unimportant matter. The best American critics themselves agree on this point. Mr. Howells writes: ”There are too many things brought together in which the reader can and should have no interest. The thousand and one petty incidents of the various casualties of life that are grouped together in newspaper columns are profitless expenditure of money and energy.”

The culminating point of this aimless congeries of reading matter, good, bad, and indifferent, is attained in the Sunday editions of the larger papers. Nothing comes amiss to their endless columns: scandal, politics, crochet-patterns, bogus interviews, puerile hoaxes, highly seasoned police reports, exaggerations of every kind, records of miraculous cures, funny stories with comic cuts, society paragraphs, gossip about foreign royalties, personalities of every description. In fact, they form the very ragbag of journalism. An unreasonable pride is taken in their very bulk--as if forty pages _per se_ were better than one; as if the tons of garbage in the Sunday issue of the Gotham _Gasometer_ outweighed in any valuable sense the ten or twelve small pages of the Parisian _Temps_. Not but that there is a great deal of good matter in the Sunday papers. _Wer vieles bringt wird manchem etwas bringen_; and he who knows where to look for it will generally find some edible morsel in the hog-trough. It has been claimed that the Sunday papers of America correspond with the cheaper English magazines; and doubtless there is some truth in the a.s.sertion. The pretty little tale, the interesting note of popular science, or the able sketch of some contemporary political condition is, however, so hidden away amid a ma.s.s of feebly ill.u.s.trated and vulgarly written notes on sport, society, criminal reports, and personal interviews with the most evanescent of celebrities that one cannot but stand aghast at this terrible misuse of the powerful engine of the press. It is idle to contend that the newspaper, as a business undertaking, must supply this sort of thing to meet the demand for it. It is (or ought to be) the proud boast of the press that it leads and moulds public opinion, and undoubtedly journalism (like the theatre) is at least as much the cause as the effect of the depravity of public taste.

Enterprising stage-managers have before now proved that Shakespeare does _not_ spell ruin, and there are admirable journals in the United States which have shown themselves to be valuable properties without undue pandering to the frivolous or vicious side of the public instinct.[17]

A straw shows how the wind blows; let one item show the unfathomable gulf in questions of tone and taste that can subsist between a great American daily and its English counterparts. In the summer of 1895 an issue of one of the richest and most influential of American journals--a paper that such men as Mr. Cleveland and Mr. McKinley have to take account of--published under the heading ”A Fortunate Find” a picture of two girls in bathing dress, talking by the edge of the sea.

One says to the other: ”How did you manage your father? I thought he wouldn't let you come?” The answer is: ”I caught him kissing the typewriter.” It is, of course, perfectly inconceivable that any reputable British daily could descend to this depth of purposeless and odious vulgarity. If this be the style of humour desiderated, the Thunderer may take as a well-earned compliment the American sneer that ”no joke appears in the London _Times_, save by accident.” If another instance be wanted, take this: Major Calef, of Boston, officiated as marshal at the funeral of his friend, Gen. Francis Walker. In so doing he caught a cold, of which he died. An evening paper hereupon published a cartoon showing Major Calef walking arm in arm with Death at General Walker's funeral.

Americans are also apt to be proud of the number of their journals, and will tell you, with evident appreciation of the fact, that ”nearly two thousand daily papers and fourteen thousand weeklies are published in the United States.” Unfortunately the character of their local journals does not altogether warrant the inference as to American intelligence that you are expected to draw. Many of them consist largely of paragraphs such as the following, copied verbatim from an issue of the Plattsburg _Sentinel_ (September, 1888):

George Blanshard, of Champlain, an experienced prescription clerk and a graduate of the Albany School of Pharmacy, has accepted a position in Breed's drug-store at Malone.

Clerk Whitcomb, of the steamer ”Maquam,” has finished his season's work in the boat, and has resumed his studies at Burlington.

I admit that the interest of the readers of the _Sentinel_ in the doings of their friends Mr. Blanshard and Mr. Whitcomb is, perhaps, saner and healthier than that of the British sn.o.b in the fact that ”Prince and Princess Christian walked in the gardens of Windsor Castle and afterwards drove out for an airing.” But that is the utmost that can be said for the propagation of such utter vapidities; and the man who pays his five cents for the privilege of reading them can scarcely be said to produce a certificate of intelligence in so doing. If the exhibition of such intellectual feebleness were the worst charge that could be brought against the American newspaper, there would be little more to say; but, alas, ”there are some among the so-called leading newspapers of which the influence is wholly pernicious because of the perverted intellectual ability with which they are conducted.” (Prof.

Chas. E. Norton, in the _Forum_, February, 1896.)

The levity with which many--perhaps most--American journals treat subjects of serious importance is another unpleasant feature. They will talk of divorces as ”matrimonial smash-ups,” or enumerate them under the caption ”Divorce Mill.” Murders and fatal accidents are recorded with the same jocosity. Questions of international importance are handled as if the main purpose of the article was to show the writer's power of humour. Serious speeches and even sermons are reported in a vein of flippant jocularity. The same trait often obtrudes into the review of books of the first importance. The traditional ”No case--abuse the plaintiff's attorney” is translated into ”Can't understand or appreciate this--let's make fun of it.”

By the best papers--and these are steadily multiplying--the ”interview” is looked upon as a serious opportunity to obtain in a concise form the views of a person of greater or less eminence on subjects of which he is ent.i.tled to speak with authority. By the majority of journals, however, the interview is abused to an inordinate extent, both as regards the individual and the public. It is used as a vehicle for the cheapest forms of wit and the most personal attack or laudation. My own experience was that the interviewer put a series of pre-arranged questions to me, published those of my answers which met his own preconceptions, and invented appropriate subst.i.tutes for those he did not honour with his approval.

A Chicago reporter made me say that English ignorance of America was so dense that ”a gentleman of considerable attainments asked me if Connecticut was not the capital of Pittsburgh and notable for its great Mormon temple,”--an elaborate combination due solely to his own active brain. The same ingenuous (and ingenious) youth caused me to invent ”an erratic young Londoner, who packed his bag and started at once for any out-of-the-way country for which a new guide-book was published.” Another, with equal lack of ground, committed me to the unpatriotic a.s.sertion that neither in Great Britain nor in any other part of Europe was there any scenery to compare with that of the United States. But perhaps the unkindest cut of all was that of the reporter at Was.h.i.+ngton who made me introduce my remarks by the fatuous expression ”Methought”! Mr. E.A. Freeman was much amused by a reporter who said of him: ”When he don't know a thing, he says he don't. When he does, he speaks as if he were certain of it.” Mr. Freeman adds: ”To the interviewer this way of action seemed a little strange, though he clearly approved of the eccentricity.” This gentleman's mental att.i.tude, like his superiority to grammar, is, unfortunately, characteristic of hundreds of his colleagues on the American press.

The distinction between the editorial and reportorial functions of a newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism is reserved for the editorial columns. This is by no means the case in America. Such an authority as the _Atlantic Monthly_ admits that wilful distortion is not infrequent: the reporter seems to consider it as part of his duty to amend the record in the interest of his own paper or party. The American reporter, in a word, may be more active-minded, more original, more amusing, than his English colleague; but he is seldom so accurate. This want of impartiality is another of the patent defects of the American daily press. It is a too unscrupulous partisan; it represents the ethics of the ward politician rather than the seeker after truth.

If restraint be a sign of power, then the American press is weak indeed. There is no reticence about it. Nothing is sacred to an American reporter; everything that can be in any sense regarded as an item of news is exposed to the full glare of publicity. It has come to be so widely taken for granted that one likes to see his name in the papers, that it is often difficult to make a lady or gentleman of the American press understand that you really prefer to have your family affairs left in the dusk of private life. The touching little story ent.i.tled ”A Thanksgiving Breakfast,” in _Harper's Magazine_ for November, 1895, records an experience that is almost a commonplace except as regards the unusually thin skin of the victim and the unusual delicacy and good feeling of the operator. The writer of an interesting article in the _Outlook_ (April 25, 1896), an admirable weekly paper published in New York, sums it up in a sentence: ”It is no exaggeration to say that the wanton and unrestricted invasion of privacy by the modern press const.i.tutes in certain respects the most offensive form of tyranny which the world has ever known.” The writer then narrates the following incident to ill.u.s.trate the length to which this invasion of domestic privacy is carried:

A cultivated and refined woman living in a boarding-house was so unfortunate as to awaken the admiration of a young man of unbalanced mind who was living under the same roof. He paid her attentions which were courteously but firmly declined. He wrote her letters which were at first acknowledged in the most formal way, and finally ignored. No woman could have been more circ.u.mspect and dignified. The young man preserved copies of his own letters, introduced the two or three brief and formal notes which he had received in reply, made a story of the incident, stole the photograph of the woman, enclosed his own photograph, mailed the whole matter to a New York newspaper, and committed suicide. The result was a two or three column report of the incident, with portraits of the unfortunate woman and the suicide, and an elaborate and startling exaggeration of the few inconspicuous, insignificant, and colorless facts from which the narrative was elaborated. That a refined woman in American society should be exposed to such a brutal invasion of her privacy as that which was committed in this case reflects upon every gentleman in the country.

No doubt, as the _Outlook_ goes on to show, the American people are themselves largely responsible for this att.i.tude of the press. They have as a whole not only less reverence than Europeans for the privacy of others, but also less resentment for the violation of their own privacy. The new democracy has resigned itself to the custom of living in gla.s.s houses and regards the desire to shroud one's personal life in mystery as one of the survivals of the dark ages. The newspaper personalities are largely ”the result of the desperate desire of the new cla.s.ses, to whom democratic inst.i.tutions have given their first chance, to discover the way to _live_, in the wide social meaning of the word.”

One regrettable result of the way in which the American papers turn liberty into license is that it actually deters many people from taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation, together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men.

One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as ”a wretched, rattle-pated boy.” Others constantly alluded to Mr. Cleveland as ”His Corpulency.” For weeks the New York _Sun_ published a portrait of President Hayes with the word FRAUD printed across the forehead.

Such competent observers as Mr. George W. Smalley (_Harper's Magazine_, July, 1898) bear testimony to the fact that the irresponsibility of the press has seriously diminished its influence for good. Thus he points out that ”the combined and active support given by the American press to the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty weighed as nothing with the Senate.” In recent mayoralty contests in New York and in Boston, almost the whole of the local press carried on vigorous but futile campaigns against the successful candidates.

Several public libraries and reading-rooms have actually put some of the leading journals in an Index Expurgatorius.[18]

The moral and intellectual defects of the American newspaper are reflected in its outward dress. Neither the paper nor the printing of a New York or Boston daily paper is so good as that of the great English dailies. American editors are apt to claim a good deal of credit for the ill.u.s.trations with which the pages of their journals are sprinkled; but a less justifiable claim for approbation was surely never filed. In nine cases out of ten the wood-cuts in an American paper are an insult to one's good taste and sense of propriety, and, indeed, form one of the chief reasons for cla.s.sing the American daily press as distinctly lower than that of England. The reason of this physical inferiority I do not pretend to explain. It is, however, a strange phenomenon in a country which produces the most beautiful monthly magazines in the world, and also holds its own in the paper, printing, and binding of its books. But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the magazines and books of England and America are merely varieties of the same species, while the daily journals of the two countries belong to totally different orders. Many of the better papers are now beginning to give up ill.u.s.trations. A bill to prevent the insertion in newspapers of portraits without the consent of the portrayed was even brought before the New York Legislature. An exasperating feature of American newspapers, which seems to me to come also under the head of physical inferiority, is the practice of scattering an article over the whole of an issue. Thus, on reaching the foot of a column on page 1 we are more likely than not to be directed for its continuation on page 7 or 8. The reason of this is presumably the desire to have all the best goods in the window; _i.e._, all the most important head-lines on the front page; but the custom is a most annoying one to the reader.

It is frequently a.s.serted by Americans that their press is very largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often venal. On such points as these I venture to make no a.s.sertion. To prove them would require either a special knowledge of the back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the working of American inst.i.tutions and the evolution of American character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and att.i.tude. I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs may read. It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English press.

So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a cla.s.s seem to me distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain. But I believe this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two countries would alone warrant the inference. The trail of the reporter is over them all. Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of the pa.s.sage of a needle's eye by a camel, believe it impossible for reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy of respect for the mental privacy of others which we a.s.sociate with the idea of true gentlemanliness. Mr. Smalley, in a pa.s.sage controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admits that a modern reporter has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession.

The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address.

This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting, and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period of their career, of a.s.sociating with the best-mannered men of the time. It is, of course, highly honourable to American society and to themselves that they have and take the opportunity of advancement, but the fact remains patent in their slipshod style and the faulty grammar of their writings, and in their vulgar familiarity of manner. It has been a.s.serted that journalism in America is not a profession, and is ”subject to none of the conditions that would ent.i.tle it to the name.

There are no recognised rules of conduct for its members, and no tribunal to enforce them if there were.”