THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC
Russell, Charles Edward
The Press and the Public Aristocracy and Privilege Maintained by Controlling People's Daily Reading By CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL THIS POWER of control over a people's daily reading, which may justly...
...Many of them loathe the situation as bitterly as any of the rest of us...
...How Political News is Handled NOW when we come to consider that the misuse of this mighty power is always on the side of reaction and always to strengthen the autocratic idea, whether in government or in business, here is something to make us all think...
...Let's have one of your old-time rib roasters...
...It takes some moral courage to stand up to the rack under a loss like that...
...When a disagreeable incident occurs it is glossed over if it cannot be ignored, or the legislator that protests against the iniquity is represented as a roaring ass or a blatant demagogue...
...We cannot expect it of every publisher...
...There is one magazine in New York that I suppose must have lost in the last five years three or four hundred thousand dollars in advertisements because it offended two trusts...
...Life in the east end of London...
...Behind the Scenes SOMETIMES we catch a glimpse of the inside machinery of a controlled newspaper and we can observe then the exact process by which doctored and poisonous news reports are prepared...
...Is not that a curious condition to arise in a country that for more than a century has boasted of its press...
...It is, indeed, indispensable...
...It is evident, therefore, that this condition we face is not only very grave but is certain to grow worse...
...If they are unwilling to please the advertisers somebody else will be hired to do the steering...
...I mention here two examples, merely to show how irresistible it is...
...They can't help themselves...
...You can't expect to get very far with reform ideas so long-as this is the case...
...There runs through all the world a certain strong bond of sympathetic feeling between great wealth, aristocracy, rank, caste, privilege, and practical feudalism...
...A Boston man that the Interests did not like was making an address in Cooper Union in 1906...
...But even the magazines can be made to suffer somewhat through their advertising columns...
...By means of elaborately "tainted news" the sympathy of America, which would naturally have been overwhelmingly on the side of the Boers, was so perverted that we actually saw our government lending its countenance and even its practical cooperation to the British and saw this without a protest...
...He would not be human if he did not regard those Interests with increased respect...
...The Press and the Public Aristocracy and Privilege Maintained by Controlling People's Daily Reading By CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL THIS POWER of control over a people's daily reading, which may justly be regarded as the greatest power in the world, has several times been exerted in a way that has profoundly affected history...
...For instance, automobile advertising is now one of the most important sources of magazine revenue...
...corporations have upon national legislation would last no longer than until the next election...
...Free libraries are good things, gifts to universities are good things, but all other good things together are not equal to the good thing of a newspaper press that reverences the absolute integrity of its news columns...
...It has on its black list several men that it habitually attacks because they have earned the ill-will of the Interests—men like Judge Lindsey, Mr...
...When he returned the city editor said: "Well—got a good roast...
...The night editor reflected for a moment and then said: "Well, write one line and say 'So-and-so muckraked.'" Observe that the attitude is first to attack the man the Interests do not'like and then to twist the facts to suit the purposes of the attack...
...If they offend the advertisers, away go the profits...
...We had no way to learn the truth...
...You go up there and roast the tar out of him...
...Putting Words in a Speaker's Mouth AVERY effective way to make war upon the undesirable one is to represent him as saying something that he never said and never dreamed of saying and then refuse to correct the error...
...Every correspondent in the gallery knew better than I the true nature of the work he was observing, but none of them sent it out...
...There is in New York a ceitain newspaper distinguished above others for its valet-like attitude towardb the Interests...
...Give it to him as hard as you can...
...To send it out would merely incur the danger of a reprimand...
...Heney, Clarence Darrow, and others...
...The next day the reactionary press described this man as calling upon the milk dealers, bakers, grocers and butchers, to go on a general strike and starve New York into submission to some species of revolution not defined...
...The city editor called his ablest reporter...
...Here," said he, "this fellow So-and-so is to speak tonight...
...It was always described as an issue over the right of franchise and the Boers were said to be tyrannical oppressors of a handful of deserving Englishmen, who were upholding the principles of freedom and justice...
...And there you are...
...Not what he said...
...At the time of the Boer war all the information furnished to the world about that struggle came through London and was so adroitly and persistently colored that the people, of America, for instance, never knew what the row was about...
...And who has effected the consolidations...
...To the maintenance and success of all these outworn and mediaeval institutions a power over the press is the greatest possible assistance...
...The facts, of course, as patiently set forth by the German Ambassador in January, 1902, and confirmed by the foreign offices, are exactly the reverse, but have never made the least impression...
...We may therefore conclude the fact to be that not only can false news utterly mislead an entire nation but the effects of it may be indestructible...
...What did he talk about...
...Within the last six months there have been very important consolidations of automobile factories...
...Even now the wise man views with suspicion everything he reads in his daily newspaper...
...Therefore the people know next to nothing about the real conduct of their own business...
...I have sat sometimes in the press galleries and ?een going on before me the most adroit tricks in legislative legerdemain, jokers inserted in bills and dishonest measures introduced covertly...
...The profits of that enterprise depend to a great extent upon the skill with which they steer a certain course...
...The falsehood has been responsible for very remarkable results in our social and political life, and seems destined to bear fruit perennially...
...To bring home the verity of the services performed by humble toilers he asked his hearers to picture to themselves their own personal inconveniences if at the same time all the milk dealers should fail to deliver milk, all the bakers fail to bake bread, all the butchers fail to deliver meat, and so on...
...As a matter of fact the war was instigated by the mine owners of the Rand for the purpose of getting cheap labor, and by the British imperialists ambitious to grab off additional territory...
...It may be correct, or it may be cooked up to get even with somebody or it may be edited by some advertiser...
...Well, can't you roast that...
...No," said the reporter, "I haven't any roast at all...
...What was the use...
...If, for example, the people of the entire United States could be informed every day of exactly what happens at Washington and the reasons for it, the peculiar strangle-hoid that the "// the people of the entire United States could be informed every day of exactly what happens at Washington and the reason for it, the peculiar strangle hold that the corporations have upon national legislation would last no longer than until the next election...
...He was trying to show the injustice of the system by which the producer of wealth is less esteemed than the idler that is of no service to society...
...The best advertisers are closely bound up with the financial institutions, which are owned by the Interests, which are always reactionary, autocratic and opposed to democracy...
...It is no fault of individual editors...
...Magazines More Independent THE MAGAZINES, having a much more diversified advertising patronage, and getting little from the department stores, can afford to be much more independent...
...Their newspapers didn't want it and wouldn't print it...
...Another striking illustration is the universal belief created in this country in 1898 that Great Britain had stepped between us and a threatened hostile coalition by the nations of the Continent at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war...
...One of these men was to deliver an address one night in New York...
...The people must know what is wrong before they will act to correct the wroi g- A democracy without a free press is like a locomotive without steam...
...They are hired to do certain work for a certain business enterprise...
...Why not...
...The reporter went to the meeting...
...It may look all right but it will not run a foot...
...This fantastic invention having been assiduously repeated a million times or thereabouts seized such firm hold of the popular imagination that even the most complete official refutation has never been able to eradicate the belief that "Great Britain was our friend" in 1898...
...j. Pierpont Morgan, the head of the Central Interests and the most powerful individual in America...
...There's nothing to roast...
...They occurred in international affairs, but similar instances are easily cited from our domestic concerns...
...Hence the Interests attempt to throttle the magazines by having them thrown out of the second-class mails...
...He is in business to make money and as the process of consolidation goes rapidly on before him he sees one business after another slipping over into the control of the Central Interests...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 22
