NEWSPAPER AND THE INTEREST
Russell, Charles Edward
Newspapers and the Interests How Heney was Maligned in the "News" Columns By CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL WE NOTED last week that the evil control of the press resulted in part from the necessary...
...Ridicule was brought into play...
...He devoted the next two years to this work without compensation and merely as a matter of civic duty...
...Similarly the whole case of the prosecution was distorted and misrepresented...
...He had from a sense of public duty sacrificed to this work his time and labor and had almost sacrificed his life...
...But the harder the friends of Ballinger work to get him out of the mire, the deeper he sinks in and the splashings of his struggle bespatter the White House and its occupant...
...There was one lawyer opposed to him in the trials whose special function seemed to be to start daily wrangles and to goad Heney into retort...
...Therefore to these Interests the elimination of Heney was absolutely necessary and they proceeded to eliminate him in the way I have described...
...Ballinger is going to defeat the Republican party in this fall elections...
...Now if such was the case with men whose sense of duty compelled them to support the prosecution, how do you think it was with the men that had been made to believe the prosecution was injuring San Francisco and injuring business and was unnecessary, unfounded and instituted for personal spite...
...These corporations are a part of the great Central Interests that control the banks, which control the advertisers which control the newspapers, which are compelled to distort the news in order to hold their advertising and meet their bills...
...Whenever these occasions would arise the newspapers would publish Heney's retorts or parts of them but not the provocation...
...26 Broadway, for that is where all the strings come home...
...The Mer.a:c of Distorted News THESE methods were so successful that many of Mr...
...Yet the news columns drove him out of public life to the great injury of the public interests...
...Heney's motives were steadily impugned...
...Why the Press was Used Against Heney BACK of it all there was another fact that ought now to be thoughtfully contemplated...
...TI12 department stores and merchants exerted their pull upon the newspapers and the newspapers systematically, day after day, misrepresented everything that Heney said or did...
...When he began to prosecute rich bribe-givers as well as poor bribe-takers a fierce opposition arose...
...A Case in Point WHEN the hideous rottenness in the government of San Francisco was fully laid bare in 1907, Francis J. Heney offered his services, free of charge, to prosecute the grafters...
...For every conceivable reason the sympathies of the public were naturally with Mr...
...It might as well be edited openly from No...
...Heney's close friends and adherents were affected by them...
...Let a newspaper attack you in its editorial.: a 0 f- c;o v, .ivcJl.ed...
...So then, as before, question: If we have no longer a free press in America what security have we in any others of our rights...
...He had fought steadily against great odds and many dangers...
...This constituted probably the most difficult feat ever attempted in the way of influencing public sentiment...
...Russell's series of articles about the control of the press in the United States will deal with "Newspapers and the Interests...
...A lawyer prosecuting a case must defend his position whenever it is attacked...
...So long as Mr...
...I have seen this happen a thousand times...
...Always, thereafter, that thing will stick in their minds...
...In the midst of his activities two attempts were made to kill him, from one of which he escaped by a hair's breadth...
...Newspapers and the Interests How Heney was Maligned in the "News" Columns By CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL WE NOTED last week that the evil control of the press resulted in part from the necessary dependence of newspapers upon their great advertisers, who are in turn dependent upon the banks, which are in turn controlled by the great Central Interests in finance and business...
...If you were to read every day for six months in your newspaper repot ts of actions or sayings by one man clearly indicating that man to be a liar or a lunatic you would begin after a time to believe him to be a liar or a lunatic, would you not...
...They convinced a large part of the country that he was a wild, erratic, absurd visionary when as a matter of fact he had one of the coolest, clearest and steadiest minds I have known in a long acquaintance with public men and affairs...
...Their complaints were artfully fostered and exaggerated and all brought to bear against Heney...
...You won Id say, "Here is a report of something that happened...
...But let its t.eus coimuKs gi>.e a)i account of something you are alleged to have said or done ai:d your dearest friends on earth will hot escape the infection...
...The wonder is that he got any votes...
...The most absurd insinuations were set afloat...
...I have no objection to mentioning his name...
...The sure way to do this was to arouse public sentiment against Heney to a point where it would not allow the prosecutions to go on...
...He was shot through the lower part of the head and supposed to be mortally hurt...
...Heney was put into the position of an insincere prosecutor pursuing the accused for his own glory and using melodramatic and ludicrous methods...
...How Heney Was Misrepresented THAT is the way the game was worked on Mr...
...The same thing worked £he same way with Mr...
...If Mr...
...Some of the men he was trying to convict were closely connected with the most powerful Interests in this country and the full influence of these Interests was exerted to save the men that Heney menaced...
...And that is the point that I most desire to emphasize, the enormous power wielded by the controlled news columns...
...Inevitably—for who could escape conclusions daily thrust upon him, nof by the editorial opinions cf a newspaper but apparently by the recorded event;- of the day...
...The "glorious spirit of optimism" can wait awhile until we get these matters settled...
...If he were to be governor he would end the supremacy of the corporations that for more than a generation havt dominated the state...
...Russell cites some striking Instances of the wonderful power of the press in shaping- the public opinion of the nation.—EDITOR'S NOTE...
...Of course they beat Mr...
...He stood in a position to be a popular hero...
...The Interests, therefore, as far away as New York, exerted their pull upon the banks in San Francisco...
...It must be true or nearly true, and this man written about here must be a liar or a lunatic...
...Nothing that he did was honestly meant...
...By this simple device they speedily created the impression that he was a furious and reckless person roaring up and down the court room, insulting everybody...
...Again and again I ran across this...
...You would never know that the reports were distorted, that they gave only a half or a quarter of the man's utterances, that what he really said was true and sane only it had been twisted to look false or crazy...
...Business men (upon instigation) complained that the prosecution was hutting business and retarding the rebuilding of the city...
...Even when the ridicule or the lie appears in a newspaper that they know perfectly well hates the man and wants to destroy him, they will make no allowance for that fact...
...Think about these facts sometime when you are assured that everything is bvely with us an-i you need not worry about conditions, for this is a little description of things as they actually are...
...The news columns of a newspaper can ridicule a man out of the affections of his own family, out of the esteem of his friends, out of the support of his party and his colleagues...
...It was R. F. Pettigrew...
...When as a matter of fact he had done ncthing of the kind, but that particular thing was one of the things faked or distorted by the hostile newspaper...
...Any hard-fought trial will afford boundless opportunities for this sort of thing...
...all was either fantastic or knavii.li...
...He was trying to punish the worst gang of political bandits that ever disgraced an American community...
...They read it in the news columns, there must be something in it, they believe it in spite of themselves, in spite of loyalty, in spite of everything in the world...
...Years ago there was a man in the United States Senate that certain newspapers did not like because he had attacked the Interests that owned these newspapers...
...The task was to alienate from him the public support, powerfully drawn around him by so many elements...
...That wonderful task was achieved and this was the way it was done: Newspapers Arrayed Against Heney THE Interests wanted to have Heney discredited first and then beaten at the polls, for logically he was the inevitable candidate for District Attorney...
...flWilliam Marion Reedy in The Mirror says: "Desperate are the attempts made to exculpate Ballinger of the charge of trying to give over the Alaskan coal lands to the Morganheims...
...The newspapers covered that man with ridicule by misrepresenting everything he did or said...
...They will believe what they read in the news columns and disregard everything else...
...I have heard men in San Francisco that supported Heney and voted for him say: "I was with the prosecution, but of course it is true that Heney did so and so...
...Heney at the polls...
...To a skillful hand nothing is easier than to make even the most serious cause take on a comic aspect...
...Heney's activities were directed toward convicting low politicians he met with general applause...
...One instance of the workings of this species of press control that fell largely under my own observation is such an apt example that I am going to tell it in full...
...Xobody reads the editorials...
...If the attacks on him be concealed in the press and his replies be exaggerated he will appear not much better than a howling madman...
...And that is the true nature of the free press that we have now in America...
...These Interests are arrayed (in reality though not ostensibly) against the public, for the reason that they thrive on Privilege, and Privilege is something unjustly taken from the people...
...Every observer, particularly if he has been a newspaper man, must be familiar with it...
...The bulk of his support must have represented the readers of the few newspapers that resisted their advertisers and supported the prosecution or refrained from misrepresenting it...
...Let us hear about that first...
...They can make the men fighting with him for the same cause distrust and dislike him...
...The next installment of Mr...
...Heney had been elected District Attorney he would have been the next Governor of California...
...The banks exerted their pull upon the department stores and merchants...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 21
