THE MAKING OF PUBLIC OPINION (I. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Kittle, William
THE MAKING OF PUBLIC OPINION I. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS "The Most Powerful Public-Opinion-Forming Agency in the United States." Is it a Monopoly? Is it Impartial? By WILLIAM KITTLE DURING the...
...Louis Star which had sought to compel the Associated Press to sell news at reasonable rates...
...Its editor has a high conception of journalism in relation to good government...
...The annual published reports show that the first named twelve directors have held office continually from 1900 to 1908...
...The Secretary reported the full voting strength as 5,444...
...A true cooperative plan would admit to membership all who were willing to pay the pro rata share of expenses according to the services rendered...
...M. H. de Young...
...The Chicago Daily News and the Record-Herald have given many editorials in favor of certain progressive movements...
...that there are rival agencies in the field, and that the nature of the business excludes it from the class of monopolies...
...Each of these companies has representatives in the offices of the other three and each receives the news collected by the others...
...This last statement assumes what is not true and alleges what is not disputed...
...Thus was clearly outlined the path along which the Associated Press must travel...
...There are four: unity of management, exclusiveness, economic advantage, and the limitations resulting in the law of monopoly price...
...During the last half of this period, Moody reports that the trust power of the United States has increased from twenty to nearly thirty-one billion dollars, an increase of 55 per cent...
...But it is plain that a membership representing most of the 700 newspapers in the association have less than one-seventh of the total voting strength at the annual election of officers...
...Impartiality toward them and toward certain reform movements can only come from a high sense of professional duty to render all the news accurate and reliable...
...It is true that the Associated Press is not a monopoly like a copyright or a patent right, as it has no exclusive governmental grant or franchise...
...The prosecution of offenders in San Francisco has only been a part of the wider movement in California...
...It can at any moment become the powerful ally of any special interest, but there is no way of making it the efficient instrument for forming public opinion along progressive lines...
...it is treason to the very spirit of self-government, for it corrupts the foundation of that kind of government,—enlightened public opinion...
...The plans of the convention hall are examined, and arrangements are made for operating-room and seats...
...He emphasizes the co-operative nature of the work...
...William R. Nelson came on the board in 1902...
...At that meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, 3,316 votes were cast for each of the five directors and there were no other nominations...
...It is not a natural monopoly like the ownership of coal beds or oil regions...
...For France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and the South American countries...
...Has the Associated Press been conservative or progressive, plutocratic or democratic...
...New Orleans Picayune...
...4. The Agency Havas of Paris...
...Or, has this movement been minimized, ignored in part, reported at intervals to dissipate the effect and treated as a wave of hysteria soon to pass away...
...To secure to the favored 700 newspapers the advantages of the news of all the world every day is only a different way of stating that it is a monopoly...
...Clark Howell...
...The Kansas City Star-Times does this...
...Five directors are elected each year for a term of three years at the regular annual meeting of the members of the association...
...Three, —the St...
...All are responsible to a single head,—the general manager...
...Six of the papers supported Bryan in 1908 and most of the others were for Taft...
...As a system against its customers, the public, and against its competitors, the 21,000 newspapers, it is a monopoly...
...Kittle will tell about News Bureaus and Newspapers and how they are used to make public opinion in favor of certain Special Interests...
...He wrote in 1905: "The hour for selection in news had arrived...
...Instead of cooperation in the scheme, each paper becomes a monopolist of the world's news in its immediate locality...
...It has developed an aptitude for gathering that kind of news which will increase newspaper circulation and enhance advertising space...
...It can operate at any given hour as a unit...
...The Associated Press is an agency for the collection and transmission of news of the most commercial value to a limited number of great daily papers...
...The public has little to fear from the open advocacy of special privileges by persons whose motives and interests are well known...
...New members are admitted to the association by the Board of Directors or at the annual meeting by the members of the association...
...Lyman Abbott states that 1 per cent...
...Pittsburgh Post...
...The published record does not disclose the owners of the bonds and the number of votes cast by each member...
...IN February, 1900, the supreme court of Illinois held that the Associated Press was an illegal monopoly...
...William R. Nelson...
...It is stipulated in the By-laws,—"If the registered owner waives the interest, he can cast one vote for each $25 of such bonds, provided no bondholder shall have the right to vote upon more than $1,000 of said bonds...
...that the clause in its contracts which sought to restrain members from obtaining news from other sources was an attempt at restriction upon trade and business...
...not to make or declare dividends, and is not to engage in the business of selling intelligence nor traffic in the same...
...Free discussion is in the interest of the people...
...although Mr...
...But it will be granted that here is at hand, the opportunity and machinery for forming public opinion: unity of management over a continent, a trained body of writers, and the power to select, color and emphasize any part of the daily news...
...It confers a decided economic advantage on the 700 newspaper owners who alone can sell the daily news...
...If any affirmative policy clearly appears, it is to report the unusual and the spectacular for commercial value to the newspapers served...
...They cannot afford to mold public opinion against the network of special interests which envelop them...
...but none of the fourteen can show a record of standing clearly and vigorously for a wide-spread system of guarding everywhere and all the time the public interests as opposed to special privilege...
...Several of the other papers have only colorless editorials but in many ways they show a decided conservative tendency...
...W. L. McLean...
...But the owner of a newspaper in any considerable city in the United States, not on the membership of the Associated Press knows that he cannot furnish news of equal value with that of his competitor who is a member...
...Adolph S. Ochs in 1905, and Charles H. Taylor in 1906...
...But with respect to the Labor Party and the Socialists, it is different...
...When Kansas in 1908, rejected a conservative and elected a progressive United States Senator, the general public at a distance from that state did not know the real issue involved...
...for the unlimited production and reproduction of the press dispatches cannot exhaust the raw material from which they proceed...
...The papers east of the Allegheny Mountains and those of the South joined the United Press...
...Some of them are writers of ability...
...Victor F. Lawson...
...Philadelphia Evening Bulletin...
...They have no direct representative on the Board...
...Stone explains that the Associated Press employs strong men of the best literary skill, and places them at strategic points...
...History of the Associated Press THE ASSOCIATED PRESS was organized into its present form in 1900...
...but a movement arousing the consciences of hundreds of thousands of voters, marked by largely attended public meetings, with elections where economic and moral issues are at stake, and culminating in constructive and far-reaching legislation, is surely news of the highest importance...
...Charles H. Grasty...
...and it should be frankly admitted that some of the dispatches are impartial statements of fact...
...Each division is covered by a trained body of men who are more than mere reporters...
...and when he is denied admission to membership, he needs no elaborate argument to prove that it is a monopoly...
...The cooperative feature is mainly nominal because most of the members owning newspapers have no voice in the direction of affairs...
...a third has successfully established the practical working of the initiative and referendum...
...Subsidiary agencies arose like the New England Associated Press and the Western Associated Press which bought from and furnished news to the New York agency...
...But the secret purchase or control of a newspaper or magazine, the employment of a venal news bureau which works in the dark, or the hiring of a public official to make public opinion for any special privilege is more than ordinary political corruption, like bribery...
...But what is that policy with reference to political movements tending toward constructive legislation in favor of public interests as opposed to special interests...
...The reports, scores of which have been examined, are meager, fragmentary, isolated...
...It is a clearing-house for the interchange of news among its members only...
...wars and revolutions...
...Current expenses are met by assessments on the members according to the service rendered...
...It will be conceded by all that the report of accidents, crimes, devastations by nature, wars, and most of the religious, social and educational gatherings, are accurate and reliable...
...3. The Continental Telegraphen Compagnie of Berlin, commonly called the Wolff Agency...
...From September 30, to October 24, 1908, he wrote vigorous editorials in favor of the progressive movements in Kansas, in New Hampshire, and in Iowa...
...These interests necessarily seek to obtain new or to retain old special privileges...
...Article I of the By-laws provides that it is a "mutual and co-operative organization...
...Previous to that date, in the eighties, there was a news collecting agency owned by seven New York papers and closely associated with the Reuter News Agency of Europe...
...Thomas G. Rapier...
...This represented a voting strength of 4,890 which added to the 775 votes present made a total of 5.665...
...but it is nevertheless a very real and practical monopoly...
...If the Associated Press were genuinely a cooperative effort, the membership would not be limited to 700 out of a total of some 22,000 newspapers...
...another has adopted the most democratic of constitutions...
...political, social and religious movements and the enactment of laws...
...Because it has feeble competitors in the business of gathering and selling news, with the possibility of still others entering the field, it yet holds a strategic advantage over its rivals...
...Owing to serious litigation in Illinois where it was incorporated, and to the preponderance of its interests in the east, it was incorporated in New York, May 22, 1900, and the headquarters permanently established in New York City...
...The wires of the association are carried into the building, and a work-room is usually located beneath the platform of the presiding officer...
...Adolph S. Ochs...
...Johnson was successful in more than fifty injunction suits, the general public in other states heard little or nothing of it...
...But in addition to this, the Associated Press has its own news bureaus in all of the leading capitals of Europe...
...The Most Powerful Public-Opinion-Forming Agency" THE ASSOCIATED PRESS is the most powerful public opinion-forming agency in the United States...
...It has become of increasing importance to these vast special interests and to the greater interest of the public as well, to form public opinion on one side or the other...
...The policy back of such censorship is the thing important to the public...
...and temporary defeats were given wide publicity...
...The corporation is not to make a profit...
...It is perhaps unreasonable to expect an intelligent interpretation of a movement whether it be conservative or progressive...
...Stone has graphically described one of these special fields of work: "The national conventions are our first care...
...The court declared the contract in the case and the By-law authorizing it, null and void...
...Saw Francisco Chronicle...
...The report of 1908 shows that first mortgage bonds were outstanding amounting to $122,250...
...In 1896, Senator Jones, the chairman of the Democratic national committee, and Mark Hanna, the chairman of the Republican national committee, charged the managers of the Associated Press with favoring the opposite party...
...Chicago Record-Herald...
...Charles H. Taylor...
...All the other fourteen are conservative or ultra-conservative...
...It leases from nine telegraph and telephone companies 40,000 miles of wire and its total current annual expenses amount to more than $2,500,000...
...Chicago Daily News...
...The dispatches themselves disclose the attitude of the management...
...It employs a small army of trained telegraph operators, reporters and writers, at an annual cost cost of $2,500,000...
...Each one of the fifteen Directors owns, edits or controls a great daily newspaper whose editorials day after day will disclose a conservative or a progressive attitude...
...But a careful reading of scores of such reports shows that the news is so presented and given at long intervals as practically to dissipate its effect...
...A week before the convention opens, a number of Associated Press men are on the ground to report the assembling of the delegates, to sound them as to their plans and preferences, and to indicate the trend of the gathering in their dispatches as well as they may...
...The number of editorials on these and allied subjects, clearly and strongly expressed in favor of constructive, progressive measures, exceeds all such editorials combined in the other fourteen papers...
...They simply buy the news...
...Censorship of the News MR...
...Next week Mr...
...There is and can be no absolute monopoly...
...The ordinary correspondent would not do...
...It alleges what will be conceded,—impartiality in reporting most of the news...
...They have become experts in the selection, rejection and presentation of news...
...The intercommunication of the system is well nigh complete...
...Superintendent of the Central Division, at Chicago...
...With the leading papers in that management connected by a perfect network of commercial ties with industrial corporations, railway and traction companies and trusts, has its policy been the public good as against its allies seeking special privileges...
...The unity of management is as admirable and perfect as that of a military organization...
...facts and inferences with reference to aristocracy and special privilege, or to the trend toward democracy and public interests...
...When an election recently went against him, everybody heard of the 'failure' of municipal ownership...
...Preparations begin months before they assemble...
...Louis Republic...
...But the strategic points were not the only ones to be looked after...
...2. The Reuter Telegram Co., Ltd...
...Seven hundred newspapers, representing every conceivable view of every public question, sit in judgment upon the Associated Press dispatches...
...Coming from different parts of the country, they are personally acquainted with a large majority of the delegates...
...Is the Associated Press a Monopoly...
...Herman Ridder...
...Assistant General...
...of London...
...It can furnish news cheaper and quicker than any rival agency and can therefore defeat competition...
...All of the other news-supplying agencies of the world are proprietary concerns...
...The body of trained news-gatherers now in the service of the Associated Press, in possession of telegraph and telephone systems, in constant obedience to one mind, and supported by almost unlimited resources, is for all practical purposes a monopoly...
...Harvey W. Scott...
...The men who report these conventions are drawn from all the principal offices of the Associated Press...
...Some of the industrial corporations have established monopolies injurious to the public...
...The Associated Press is characterized by every one of these...
...Nor can it be maintained that most of such statements are sent out to serve special interests...
...It is a plan by which the largest net returns, paid by the public, will accrue to the membership...
...Whenever the unusual or the extraordinary happens, like the outbreak of a war, the assassination of a ruler, or the assembling of a national convention, the Associated Press organizes a regular campaign for the collection and transmission of every detail of the news...
...All these fourteen papers show a solicitude for corporate and special interests and a critical attitude toward progressive measures...
...It issues no stock, makes no profit, and declares no dividend...
...If the rule by newspaper men is true that each paper is read by three persons, the dispatches of the Associated Press are read every day by more than one-half the total population of the United States...
...News of the highest importance, requiring for its proper treatment the best literary skill was sure to develop in the most remote quarters...
...For Great Britain and all her Colonies, China, Japan and Egypt...
...New York Times...
...Superintendent of Foreign Service, at London...
...In December, 1900, the supreme court of Missouri handed down a decision adverse to the St...
...Superintendent of the Eastern Division, at New York City...
...Strong men, especially trained for the work in hand must be chosen, and stationed at strategic points...
...Week after week and month after month is public opinion thus formed...
...The following indicates the supervision and management of the Associated Press as a working organization: General Manager, Melville E. Stone, New York City...
...For more than two years, there has been a strong movement in California against the rule of that state by special and corrupt interests, but that fact merely as news, has never reached the general public in the east...
...The By-laws provide that the association may borrow $150,000 on bonds which may be issued to the members...
...But this is carefully guarded and applicants are frequently rejected...
...By far the most progressive of the fifteen, is the Kansas City Star-Times, owned and edited by William R. Nelson...
...It is not contended that any one of these movements, measures, or men have been entirely ignored in the Associated Press...
...The presidency of the nation, with all its vast power and influence has been thrown into the scale for the highest ideals in government...
...Paul Dispatch...
...It comprises a membership of seven hundred leading daily newspapers whose total circulation is 16,000,000 issues...
...Neither controlled in any way the New York agency...
...Rooms are engaged at all the leading hotels, so that the Associated Press men may be in touch with every delegation...
...By its close business relations with the three great foreign news collecting agencies, it gathers into one continuous stream the volume of current events and movements of the world...
...In this struggle between the people and predatory wealth, a struggle enlisting on one side or the other every man of intelligence, has the management of the Associated Press had no bias...
...Is the Associated Press Impartial...
...Portland Oregonian...
...It will be remembered that the Standard Oil Co...
...By WILLIAM KITTLE DURING the last decade, public opinion has been made for and against three great special interests in the United States: the railway companies, the city utility companies, and a few industrial corporations like the Beef Trust and the Standard Oil Company...
...He says: "It is purely mutual in its character, and in this respect is unique...
...The Western Associated Press revolted against this arrangement, and as a result of a short contest, was admitted into a partnership in the management of the business...
...that the By-law of the association authorizing such contracts was in restraint of competition and that its tendency was to create a monopoly...
...It was obvious that no editor could any longer print all the information offered him...
...The dispatches for the evening papers modify or strengthen such opinions...
...Twelve of these men have been Directors since 1900, and since they elect the president, treasurer, general manager and executive committee of the association, it is fair to assume that they have controlled the policy of the Associated Press...
...But the Associated Press comprises more than 700 of the greatest daily papers of the United States...
...After such an alliance, how could the Associated Press be expected to form public opinion against special privilege...
...It assumes that the majority of the membership elect and can direct the management of the Associated Press, when in fact, by the terms of the By-laws and the issue of bonds, the voting strength to elect the fifteen directors, the executive committee, and the general manager, is vested in a small number of persons, probably less than twenty-five out of the seven hundred members...
...The general manager, and the assistant general manager have also held their positions during all of this period...
...It is true that almost every one can point to some reform movement which it has supported...
...They reflect the system which supports them...
...The management undoubtedly serves as best it can, the financial interests of these papers...
...What is that policy...
...For the Teutonic, Slav and Scandinavian countries...
...Kansas City Star-Times...
...During the same brief period, he defended La Fol-lette's course in the United States Senate, paid tribute to Tom Johnson's heroic efforts for the people of Cleveland, advocated public ownership of the water plant of Kansas City, exposed two predatory city utility companies, and declared for the initiative and referendum...
...Censorship is necessary because of the large volume of the world's news...
...The city utility companies seek the most favorable and profitable franchises...
...and this exclusiveness is carefully guarded by the By-laws and practice, in the very limited admission of new members...
...But later, both Bryan and McKinley acknowledged the impartial service rendered by the managers and their assistants...
...When this secret agreement was disclosed in 1892, the Western Associated Press terminated its ten-year agreement with the New York managers and a contest of four years ensued between the eastern and western agencies for supremacy...
...They give scant courtesy to movements for constructive legislation in the public interest...
...of the families in this country own more than the other 99 per cent...
...Manager, Charles S. Diehl, Chicago...
...This new partnership now entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Western Union Telegraph Co., "by the terms of which," in the language of Melville Stone, the present general manager of the Associated Press, "the Association was given special advantages, and it in turn refused to patronize any rival telegraph company...
...It reports accidents and crimes...
...For the United States, the Philippines, the Hawaian Islands, Central America and the Islands of the Carri-bean Sea...
...But the Reuter Agency of Europe entered into an alliance with the Western Associated Press which triumphed over its eastern rival in 1897...
...But such dispatches are something more than the 'viewless winds.' Their production on an immense scale by unity of management, for a limited number of persons, giving to such persons an economic advantage over their competitors, is indeed different from a local monopoly like a city utility company...
...Organization THERE are four great news collecting agencies in the world and for the territory indicated, as follows: 1. The Associated Press...
...Every time Tom...
...The other fourteen papers are huge commercial ventures, connected by advertising and in other ways, with banks, trust companies, railway and city utility companies, department stores and manufacturing enterprises...
...During the past eight years, one state has enacted the most progressive and far reaching legislation...
...It does not sell news to any one...
...It furnishes more than half the news published by these papers...
...The court said: "Nor is there any more property in news, to-wit, 'information,' 'intelligence,' 'knowledge,' than there is in the 'viewless winds.' " The court held in substance that the Associated Press was not a monopoly...
...These fifteen papers have been carefully examined to discover any attitude in case of a conflict between public and special interests...
...The dispatches sent during the night for the morning papers of a continent form the opinions of millions of readers for the day...
...Every interest has the right to the clearest and strongest presentation of its case...
...The newspapers outside of the Associated Press could indeed form a rival agency...
...The Board of Directors is vested with the power of issuing these bonds and hence of controlling the election of the officers and the policy of the association...
...It is strictly of, by, and for the membership...
...but the cost and the difficulties of organization together with the certainty of a prolonged contest, forbid the attempt...
...New York Staats-Zeitung...
...Superintendent of the Western Division, at San Francisco...
...The railway companies resist any important regulation of rates or service...
...pursued the same tactics by securing rebates from the railroad companies...
...So far as the consumer—the reading public—is concerned, it can and docs reduce the output of news by limiting the area of its circulation, and hence raising the value of what is sold...
...Has the vast movement over a continent against the rule of such privileged classes been adequately and fairly set forth in the Associated Press dispatches...
...Superintendent of the Southern Division, at Washington...
...Albert J. Barr...
...But instead of 700 votes, the number of newspapers in the association, the report of 1908, shows that 775 votes were present in person and 2,531 were present by proxy...
...When La Follette for five years, by a continuous contest, was placing law after law on the statute books, the matter was ignored or briefly reported in distant states...
...George Thompson...
...The strong movement in New Hampshire, headed by Winston Churchill to free that state from the grasp of the Boston and Maine Railway Company, and the movement in New Jersey led by Everett Colby, which resulted in the defeat of Senator Dryden, the President of the Prudential Insurance Company, have not been given to the people adequately as matters of news...
...A private passage is cut, communicating this work-room with the reporters' chairs which are placed directly in front of the stand occupied by speakers, and inclosed by a rail to prevent interference from the surging masses certain to congregate in the neighborhood...
...How he came to be admitted on the Board of Directors can only be explained by those rare qualities which have caused his name to be frequently mentioned in connection with a foreign diplomatic station of high rank...
...Paul Dispatch, the Portland Oregonian, and the San Francisco Chronicle,—are ultra-conservative...
...The bi-partisan character of the Board of Directors, insures fair dealing toward the two old parties...
...What are the tests of a monopoly...
...Has it a bias...
...The news thus furnished makes public opinion...
...Baltimore News...
...He supported Taft solely on the ground of his progressive stand on public questions...
...Boston Globe...
...It is indeed not to be expected that the earnestness or enthusiasm of the progressive citizen shall appear in the dispatches...
...IS the Associated Press fairly impartial in the collection of news and in its dispatches...
...Melville E. Stone claims that it is not a monopoly...
...It may be readily conceded that this policy is all that can be desired with reference to most of the news, even with many political movements...
...still others have had contests against the rule of special privileged classes...
...A representative of each of these papers has a vote in the election of the management...
...Not long after the alliance with the Western Union Telegraph Co., the United Press Association arose in the east and entered into a secret agreement with the chief manager of the Associated Press in New York that the two should work in harmony...
...STONE has shown clearly the necessity for the censorship of the daily news by the Associated Press...
...Atlanta ConstitutionCharles W. Knapp...
...The Board of Fifteen Directors ACCORDING to the eighth annual report in 1908, the following are the names of the fifteen directors of the Associated Press and of the daily papers which they edit, own or control: Frank B. Noyes...
...The Fifteen Newspapers by the Fifteen Directors BUT there is another test of the policy of the Associated Press...
...It collects and practically sells news daily to nearly 50,000,000 readers...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 26
