FAILURE OF PRESS TO SERVE PUBLIC
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Failure of Press to Serve Public Prostitution of Pittsburgh Papers During Steel Strike Exposed; Inaccuracy of Reporting and Suppression of News Shown By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Oswald Garrison...
...News About Russia IF YOU think I exaggerate, let me call your attention to the supplement printed by the New Republic exposing the untruthful or misleading news printed by the New York Times about Russia and received from the Associated Press or its own special correspondents—an indictment so overwhelming that the New York Times never found time to comment upon it...
...They merely topple one set of exploiters to install a worse, for violence is ever the rascal's opportunity...
...he takes the color from his employer without being asked to change his spots, and, being face to face with fierce competition in a commercial pursuit, he is the last man who wants to stand out against the crowd, or a popular hue and cry...
...A New Development THIS one-sidedness and inaccuracy of report-ing and suppression of essential news are a comparatively new development...
...At that time, the press printed speeches in full— an honor which comes now only to the President of the United States—so in the impending crisis which led up to the Civil war the people had facts upon which to base their judgments...
...nobody would tolerate her known presence then...
...The trouble is that the average newspaper writer is not a man of first-rate political intelligence or knowledge...
...No Haitian had ever injured an American...
...There has been no effort at a jus: appraisement of the Soviet government save by several of the liberal weeklies, and there was a complete compliance in the withdrawal of all the Associated Press correspondents from Russia a couple of years ago because of the British Gov ernment's interfering with their dispatches— just as only one or two newspapers protested against the British government's withholding, from the American press from 1914 down to the end of the war the German news to which we were by right entitled...
...It has always been so in every war...
...In addition it is worth noticing that not a single conviction for revolution or bolshevism was obtained anywhere, nor was even an arrest made therefqr by the Federal authorities...
...True Facts Were Colored S a result, the seven Pittsburgh dailies throughout gave the impression that the men on strike were disloyal, un-American and Bolshevist...
...The whole stress Was upon the foreigner and radicalism...
...Almost every daily in the country has opposed the Soviet Government and encouraged the Government in its wicked policy of starving Russian women and children, in large part because in their judgment the communism of Russia is an attack upon the sacred right of private property...
...It prates of patriotism by the hour, but in a case like this when it is a matter of insisting that the United States flag shall not be 6tained by the very men sworn to uphold it they are absolutely to seed...
...It was not always thus, if uyou will turn back to the files of the New York newspapers for the fifties, yon will be surprised to see what admirable newspapers we had then...
...it is in-Credible that the masses of the people shall not find a way to obtain their news and the facts of what is going on in the world, pure and unde-filed...
...The millionaire might invest in stocks, bonds or other securities, but these have no value except what is given them by the property which they represent...
...More millionaires would be reached by abandoning the income tax and similar taxes and levying all taxation on land values...
...Nor do I believe in press conspiracies...
...For we cannot carry on the governments of today any more than those of the future unless the facts, and again the facts, are laid before the electorate...
...If one wishes to deal with the shortcomings of the American newspapers in this matter of foreign affairs there is surely no more striking indictment than is afforded by the case of Haiti...
...of moderate means can only start a newspaper in a small town on a very small scale...
...That this is known to millionaire tax-dodgers is clear enough from the opposition of the papers they control to single tax measures wherever proposed...
...Without knowledge, democracy dies...
...How did this bap-pen...
...By permission and consent of Secretary Daniels, a censorship was thrown about the island to which the Asso dated Press and the newspapers of the country cheerfully submitted...
...The stream of news cannot rise higher than its source, and in the newspaper offices for decades past all thought of accuracy has largely vanished, together with the last vistage of desire to present your opponent's 6ide of the case:* For a clear example of the prostitution of the press through commercialization and of the inevitable reaction therefrom upon the news-gathering agencies, let us turn to Pittsburgh, in connection with its steel strike of 1919...
...we have completely broken with the old world of 1914...
...The daily press could not have failed more completely in its duty to the honor and the good name of the United States...
...The following article is an extract from that address...
...We destroyed every vestige of civil government in the island and turned loose our marine corps in' it, with the result that insurrections—pitiful little insurrections misnamed brigandage — arose against our authority...
...One would think that for that reason alone legislators and people should long ago have decided to follow some other rule...
...Then add that the average editor h little imagination and still less idealism and y get the result which you have, and that is th the bulk of the American people have lost the faith in the newspapers because they know the are either being given colored news or inspire opinions, or crooked reports, or because the feel that the aspirations and ambitions of the plain people of America are no longer bein voiced by the press...
...but I cannot find where he has ever won Ms objective through violence and cannot believe that he ever will...
...You may be sure that if the Germans had been our allies the American newspapers would^have found a hundred excuses for the dastardly sinking of the Lusitania and for the German outrages in Belgium — or our newspapers would have been silent about these horrible happenings...
...Nothing Could be worse than this showing of the prostitution of the press of Pittsburgh, and yet it was jthrough these newspapers that the American public obtained its news of the strike...
...He knows which one he can evade...
...Horrors and atrocities terve a very useful purpose when they are committed by those you do not like, say by a Lenine or a Trotzky,-but when they are committed by a Wrangel, by a Denikin, by a Kolchak, or by a British general in Ireland or in India, they are to be glossed over and safeguarded by the adjective alleged...
...Scarcely a reference to the strikers' actual demands can be found in the entire Pittsburgh press for this period...
...I was the managing editor of the New York Evening Post for 21 years and during that time no newspaper men ever approached me with a proposition that the Evening Post join with any others for the purpose of carrying on a campaign for or against anything...
...The Associated Press, for instance, is a co-operative organization, comprising more than 1,200 American newspapers, each of which becomes the source of news for the Associated Press in its particular locality...
...For over twenty years he was the managing owner of the New York Evening Post...
...Recently, Mr...
...As to this one can have the profoundest faith...
...Only a multimillionaire can now buy or start a newspaper in New York unless the support of a group can be obtained as in the case of the New York Call or one of the great organs of a foreign section of our population...
...I do not ask you to accept my word for this, but to read for yourselves the report of the exhaustive inquiries made by the United States Senate Committee on Education and Labor and the Interchurch Commission of Inquiry...
...The truth is that in our cities and larger towns the carrying on of a newspaper has become a great business enterprise, subject to the pressure for dividends the same as any other large corporation...
...One can only feel certain that the torch of liberty will lighten the way, step by step...
...We went into that country in violation of every one of the reasons given for our en-trance into the world war...
...He is not steeped or grounded in political principles...
...British Control News TAKE Russia, for instance...
...No attempt was made to investigate the charge of revolution and bolsbevism...
...that men of soul and aspiration, and courage and wisdom, shall not find another means than the spoken word to seek their way in the hearts of the people...
...In other words, the income tax law bears lightly on millionaires, although supposed to bear heavily upon them...
...Like his grandfather, William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, he is not afraid to stand alone when he believes his cause is right...
...Tax-Dodging Millionaires By SAMUEL DANZfGER THE year 1918 was the banner year in the United States for the production of millionaires...
...He is fearless...
...How can they...
...On the contrary, I am strong for the under dog's struggle to get his share of what the earth offers, and am far from believing that he has yet realized it...
...Such a tax cannot be evaded or shifted...
...Men may go forth to fight and give their lives in the holiest of causes, but when the guns are hushed and the hour strikes for an accounting, the camp followers and all the hosts of greed that infest business and politics rush in to seize whatever their claws can reach...
...The heads of the steel companies were wise enough to place more than thirty full-page advertisements in the daily press denouncing the leader ship of the strike and containing much of the misinformation as to the strike that was consistently accepted in the news columns of the Pittsburgh papers and from them transmitted to the press of the whole country through the press agencies or special dispatches...
...It is a commonplace on all sides...
...All efforts to levy taxes according to ability to pay must turn out that way...
...Yet, in spite of this fact, income tax returns for 1918 show that there were 5,248 fewer persons paying on a millionaire's income than in the previous year...
...Do not be discouraged because neither I nor any other editor can present to you a definite remedy...
...Ignorance Held Cause IDO not think that the press of the country deliberately ignored the attacks upon our Constitution, our civil liberties and -personal rights during and subsequent to the war...
...that as the race has found a path through each particular jungle into which it has strayed, ¦o it will know in time, by experience and experiment, how to solve this problem...
...In most cases this property is land, and by taxing the value of this land, the securities based upon it will be taxed...
...Its/Government had existed nearly as long as our own, during which time no more Presidents had been assassinated than were killed in office in the United States...
...WE are back again in those dark ages in which the idea prevailed that the way to prevent people from thinking as those in power did not wish them to was to establish an index expurgatorius and to keep facts away from them, to put them behind the bars, or to take them to the stake like a Huss or Savonarola...
...The press associations rise not above the level ©f the newspapers...
...She had been frowned on during the war, had been compelled to lurk in the background while the peoples were uplifted by a spirit of sacrifice...
...He knows the weaknesses of the newspapers of the nation from the inside...
...By putting their money in exempt securities provided for the purpose they keep their income intact, but also divert their wealth from more remunerative investments...
...There is nothing surprising about this...
...Villard delivered an address at Madison, Wisconsin, and in other cities of the middle west, on "The Press-Its Strength and Weakness...
...It is reprinted because it comes from a man who knows how the press of this country has been prostituted and how its one-sided-ness, inaccuracy of reporting and suppression of essential news have become commonplace in American journals.—Editor's Note...
...That would reach the unearned income at its source...
...The New York Times explains as follows in its issue of November 21: Millionaires know how to pay their taxes in strict accordance to the law, and in such manner that they do not pay too much in punishment for their wealth according to lawful standards...
...We are living in revolutionary times...
...Times of Greed and Violence WHEN the smoke of battle cleared, Greed got her great chance...
...When It comes to a choice between the income tax and a land value tax the recipient of unearned Incomes who wants his privilege to continue is sure to prefer the former...
...Some Suggested Remedies Y OU are really interested, I suppose, in what * the remedies are, if there are any\\ I have profound hopes, despite the difficulties of the present situation, that a way out will be found...
...Gone is the day when a man of small means could establish an organ of his own, and one...
...Rumors and reports of outrages and fighting occasionally filtered through to the United States while reliable and accurate facts as to what was going on, for instance, that men of letters and learning were being sentenced to years of imprisonment for criticizing the United States' occupation, filled the columns of Central and South American newspapers and further inflamed the inhabitants of those republics against this country, which they consider an overwhelming menace to their lives and liberties...
...A drop of 5,000 in circulation as the result of a given editorial policy would be likely^to bring down the wrath of heaven upon most managing editors...
...A study made of this newspaper which appeared in The Nation shows that it has reported during a period of a little over two years the fall of Petrograd six times, announced that it was on the verge of capture at least three times more, burned this unfortunate city to the ground twice, asserted it in absolute panic twice, starved it to death constantly, and had it in revolt against the Bolsheviks no less than six times, all in the columns'of the New York Times, and all without the slightest foundation in fact...
...As the new doctrines and new principles are clarified, as new political alignments take place, they wiH certainly find media for the printed expression of their views, which will give opportunity for editors who will not sell their souls, who will not be merely hired men, to arise and break their lances in behalf of the new freedom and the new society...
...Sometimes robed and accoutered to resemble Justice, sometimes aspiring to the role of Altruism, occasionally disguised as Miss Mandate, she was much of the time the dominant factor of the peace conference...
...Never was ther a press so misinformed as the American about Russia...
...That it is failing is all too obvious and the chief reason is its commercialism...
...Not until a weekly newspaper presented the facts did the truth come out — the same old truth that no more than the Germans in Southwest Africa or the English in India or Egypt or the French in Madagascar cart Americans be trusted to govern an alien and dark-colored race without its consent...
...Fully three thousand, probably many more, Haitians have paid for our incursion with their lives—all this in the name of democracy and self-determination and the rights of small nations...
...That was the year of big war contracts, of the Hog Island deal, of: the sale and lease of camp sites, of the creation of new towns through war industries, and of similar transactions...
...They have circulated incredible lies about the nationalization of women, about horrors and atrocities many of which never took place...
...To all those Americans who lent a sympathetic ear during the past two years to the champions of Bolshevism and direct action and overthrow by force the pitiable state of Europe today ought to be an eye opener...
...Here you have a chief explanation of what is wrong with the press...
...True, there was a much smaller volume of news, but on the other hand, without linotype machines and fast presses, the stereotyping process, the telephone, or the typewriter, there was accuracy and general information of a character not to be found today...
...The owners are more and more men who are less interested in putting forth certain ideals than in making a business success of their enterprises...
...Indeed, violence is precisely the chance Greed is looking for to cheat him out of his dues.—George Pat-tullo, Saturday Evening Post...
...Inaccuracy of Reporting and Suppression of News Shown By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of "The Nation," is one of the best known journalists in the United States...
...The failure of the press to serve well the public becomes, therefore, of greatest moment to the people...
...I think it was largely in ignorance of them and of the terrorization of literally millions of our fellow citizens who happened to be of foreign birth...
...And since the treaty went into effect she has been steadily gaining strength in the application of its terms...
...This is not the preamble to an argument for pacifism or patient submission to established order...
...If he does, he speedily hears from the counting room...
...If that calls for a newspaper deprived of the right to make private profits and established as a public service utility, pure and simple, with no man getting more out of it than the salary which he justly earns, then shall we have that kind of a press...
...But when the statesmen sat down in Paris sihe started in to use her wiles...
...Only one article in four hundred issues told of the suppression of free speech, peaceable assemblage, right of petition, and other Constitutional guarantees...
...I am well persuaded that when masses of men start out to gain their ends by violence they fail of their purpose ninety-nine times in a hundred, Even when their object is the laudable one of ousting a vicious system those who made the sacrifice in the effort reap no real benefits...
...The Common saying of men about others whose ©pinions they do not like is now: "Oh, they ought to be hung...
Vol. 13 • February 1921 • No. 2
