NEWSPAPER IN WAR TIME
NEWSPAPERS IN WARTIME By An EX-CITY EDITOR (From The Public) Signs multiply that the newspapers are recovering from the breakdown which threatened to be their chief contribution to the war. "Those...
...It will amaze you to discover, how many things you can do in a business way and still be honest...
...WHY BENKS WORRIED...
...They are just as respectful of bi< business...
...Now it is significant that while the Mission dared to recite its experience, so shocking to the Ameri can employers' idea, in private, neither the Mission nor its Washington sponsors dreamed of daring to attempt to utilize the American newspaper for publication of facts...
...The President's message warmly commending the Russian leaders' handling of peace offers, printed on the first page, caught most of the papers with their fnaides full of editorials damning the Bolsheviki for pro-German crooks...
...Those who were in newspaper ot-fices last April see excuses for thV.r failure...
...American employers' prejudice bulked large to the Commissioners...
...When irotzky was in America 1 was the first to get his story, but what was the use trying to print it...
...Will the people quit taking their war from the papers ? This is quite the most important question before editors these days...
...One thing—in the theatre of war you don't have to get up to let a: fat couple find their seats after the show has started.—Florida Times-| Union...
...Honesty, ever and always is the policy that is best.' 'Yes, father," said the young man...
...Nor did they seem to be satisfied when shown our best papers,—the entire front pages and half the insides monopolized by war news...
...They spent ten weeks touring the country, yet hardly anything was published about them...
...With most of them it is still a case of "business as usual...
...Those changes necessary to win the war" which editors discuss largely for others may yet be adopted by the newspapers themselves...
...A New York lawyer tells of a conversation that occurred in his presence between a bank president, and his son who was about to leave for the West, there to engage in business on his own account...
...The onset of war suddenly made editors' duties very importanr...
...Back in peace times editors were notorious for being too responsive to special interests and deaf to masse's wants...
...Their despatches from abroad warned that the war was changing everything...
...The dignified Briton nodded emphatically...
...To them as employers, the way out is to recognize organized labor and then .reach agreements with the unions...
...one concern of these men is to win the war...
...They must be stalwart an 1 looked up to...
...Deeper, they have not changed their traditional attitudes except that now what they do not like is "pro-German" instead of "Socialistic...
...The chiefs of big business may be adamant against such ideas, but ths bulk of employers are less impervious...
...Wilson's sympathetic words mean nothing...
...American newspapers exempted themselves...
...They did not get this definition from the newspapers...
...Are the papers any more preoccupied with winnina the war when they damn the I. W. W...
...No wonder he always looks woft ried...
...A great many decent, thinking, independent voters believed the choice was Tammany or Tory and they preferred to put up with Tammany...
...This was partly through their preference for meeting audiences face to face, privately, without publicity, but more through their, and American officials, distrust of the Amer-can newspaper...
...Those familiar with editor's offices know why, for example, not a paper in the East printed an elaborate communication to Congress from a lawyer, Amos Pinchot, who had collated big concerns' reports of war profits...
...was the astounding question put by the Ministry of Munitions Mission recently in this country...
...LEGAL HONESTY...
...The Lord knows how Blinks mada his money...
...The disregard into which they have fallen is indicated by the people's increased refusal to take their politics from the papers...
...What will the country think of the newspapers ? When President Wilson condemns the Bisbee deportations and editors go on applauding them, do newspapers really think they have the country with them...
...They still view with alarm drastic methods threatening privilege, though these promise to win the war...
...Son," said the father, "on this, the threshold of your business life, I desire to impress one thought upon your mind...
...And if anyone starts to agitate conscription of wealth, or even real limitation of profits, just watch the newspapers jump him for a pro-German...
...In the re-eent election in New York every metropolitan morning daily except one, campaigned for Mayor Mitchel...
...That newspapers are awaking to their responsibility is evident when one sends a trained investigator to get at the truth of the I. W. W. and the war, at the same time that another prints Trotzky's book on a Bolshevik peace...
...To the last they refused absolutely to voice criticism of America, but it is no secret that the British Mission vent home appalled at conditions in industry here...
...Hiey display the patriotism of their ancient standbys, spokes-men prominent in law and finance...
...I printed the first stories of what American Socialists wanted t-i do at Stockholm simply as information...
...But the showing up of the papers was largely the work of President Wilson and other war forces...
...The country, especially the West, would not be surprised by an acquittal...
...To them the attitude of their brother employers here is simply flabbergasting...
...They are more ignorant than ever of such things as strikes...
...He was called a pro-German pacifist and his researches suppressed...
...I printed the first stories in an Eastern dsily of the Mooney case, and it would have .fjne hard with me if the Petrograd riots over 'Muni' hadn't followed quick to justify my news judgment...
...Harper's Magazine...
...They look the same as a year ago...
...It was no time for them to be humble and introspective...
...When Secretary Baker flays the perpetrators of the Bigelow flogging and ha'f the papers fail to print his rebuke, isn't the attitude of these papers obvious...
...They see we have the men, we have the plants, we have able directing headh...
...I nearly iost my job...
...These Munitions' officials—Kent, Garrod...
...People may cease to tolerate our present papers, veracious though their accounts may be of battle lines in France and accurate as may be their spellings in the long casualty lists...
...I'd do it," said one, and another: "I'd give up practically all my little profit, but meanwhile the Government helps the big fellow pile up everything in sight...
...The Government, failing of a censorship law, increased their self-importance by making them the judges of what to print...
...There are three sacrifices in war" said one of the Commissioners in a speech, "the sacrifice of men, the sacrifice of capital" ("which is nothing," Sir Stephenson interpolated, sotto voce), "and the sacrifice of prejudice...
...People will look to see in their papers a burning search to win the war, not just the way so far favored by newspaper-owning classes...
...Baily and Asquith, were exceedingly interesting and important visitors...
...Theirs was the employers' viewpoint and while they did talk to labor men their main concern was to be questioned by employers...
...Headed by Sir Stephenson Kent, a wealthy coa;-operator, they came to talk to employers...
...No dissensions...
...Suppose the great I. W. W. trial in Chicago nevt month shows not a scintilla of evidence against the 16G defendants, what will become of these columns of stories of a "gigantic I. W. W anti-war conspiracy...
...Appalled" is the right word—their own...
...The Britishers seemed to expect a change in the papers, an attitude of complete concern over but one thing, winning the war, no matter whose ideas went by the board...
...When newspapers bury little items of the Government's settling war strikes by granting union demands, while editorials go on calling strikers "traitors," the newspapers are simply publishing their own break-down...
...The farthest I they went in comparisons was this from Garrod: "If one-eighth of the labor disturbances we have personally observed in two months in this country had happened in England in the past three years, England would now be sueing for a disgraceful peace...
...Before this, the paper3: own dispatches from Brest-Litovsk bad aroused suspicion that the American editorial writers were concerned not so much by the Bolsheviki peace policy as by their confiscatory social program...
...At least one paper m the East printed the Federal Income Tax Report showing an increase of 7,000 millionaires in the past fiscal year, but no person looked for editorial comment least of all those who hold the theory that drastic limitations of profits would do more than anything else to unite the country behind the war Here is what an experienced news editor said in admitting that he was glad to be doing his war servnj somewhere else than in his old office: "I believed the war was of .ill times the hour for printing tha facts...
...Why aran't your American papers more taxen up with the war...
...WAR'S ONE VIRTUE...
...The difficulty...
...They seemed to expect the editors to be preoccupied with the search for the winning way, not a winning way which would save somebody's privileges...
...Newspapers which ran Petrograd despatches headed "Bolsheviki Rule Can Last But Few Hours More/' for two months, convicted themselves of not getting the truth...
...To them it is mainly a question of manpower and its utilization...
...And the first big paper to limit the word "pro-German" to not over thirty repetitions in one edition and to agitate determinedly for winning, no matter whose fortunes or prejudices are sacrificed, will, for one thing, be rewarded by a jump in circulation, the like of which has never startled newspaperdom...
...Don't start anything new...
...The American newspaper, like American industry, entered the war with its house not in order...
...Their attitude toward labor is the same...
...Every line of type became matter of life and death...
...Three cheers for the flag...
...Tilings will begin to totter indeed if the masses want the war won in wavs different from the prescription of the newspapers, of the newspaper owning classes...
...Editors, exalted to find themselves in the first line of defense struck the very human pose of "Close up the ranks...
...They were to mold public opinion, to maintain morale...
...They wouldn't say so...
...Hylan's name never appeared on the first page except as the butt of some "expose...
...The vote, as the result on suffrage proved, was not entirely unintelligent, unconsidered or perverse...
...They confined themselve3 to a recital of their experience*, sedulously avoiding to advise...
...And yet inquiry among business men who heard the British recital might show them not so deaf to the visitors' "wia-the-war" labor policy...
...Doubts, dissensions and innovations came thick but it never occurred to editors that their slogan lacked efficiency...
...Louis Gk-be-Democrat...
...Modern wars, they were reminded, were fought with printing presses no less than with artillery...
...They carry the same advertisements, largely of sales non-essential to the war...
...And, by the way," added the grey-beard, "I would advise you to read up a little bit on corporation' law...
...Faced with their silence a questioner rapped his brow inquiringly with his knuckles...
...Judging by the papers there could be little question of the merits of the election...
...At present these editorials are performing for the President t"he same service which they charged to Bryan in the Dum-ba affair, assuring Revolutionary Russia that Mr...
...The appalling thing is the attitude of the American employer...
Vol. 10 • March 1918 • No. 3
