Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two of Public Opinion by Walter Littman. This
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Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Recorded by the Progressing America Project. Public Opinion,
Speaker 1: Chapter twenty two. The constant reader. The loyalty of the
Speaker 1: buying public to a newspaper is not stipulated in any bond.
Speaker 1: In almost every other enterprise, the person who expects to
Speaker 1: be served enters into an agreement that controls his passing whims.
Speaker 1: At least he pays for what he obtains. In the
Speaker 1: publishing of periodicals, the nearest approach to an agreement for
Speaker 1: a definite time is the paid subscription, and that is not,
Speaker 1: I believe, a great factor in the economy of a
Speaker 1: metropolitan daily. The reader is the soul and the daily
Speaker 1: judge of his loyalty, and there can be no suit
Speaker 1: against him for breach of promise or non support. Though
Speaker 1: everything turns on the constancy of the reader, there does
Speaker 1: not exist even a vague tradition to call that fact
Speaker 1: to the reader's mind. His constancy depends on how he
Speaker 1: happens to feel, or on his habits, and these depend
Speaker 1: not simply on the quality of the news, but more
Speaker 1: often on a number of obscure elements that, in our
Speaker 1: casual relation to the press we hardly take the trouble
Speaker 1: to make conscious. The most important of these is that
Speaker 1: each of us tends to judge a newspaper, if we
Speaker 1: judge it at all, by its treatment of that part
Speaker 1: of the news in which we feel ourselves involved. The
Speaker 1: newspaper deals with a multitude of events beyond our experience,
Speaker 1: and by its handling of those events, we most frequently
Speaker 1: decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it,
Speaker 1: or refuse to have the sheet in the house. If
Speaker 1: the newspaper gives a satisfactory account of that which we
Speaker 1: think we know our business, our church, our party, it
Speaker 1: is fairly certain to be immune from violent criticism by us.
Speaker 1: What better criterion does the man at the breakfast table
Speaker 1: possess than that the newspaper version checks up with his
Speaker 1: own opinion. Therefore, most men tend to hold the newspaper
Speaker 1: most strictly accountable in their capacity, not of general readers,
Speaker 1: but of special pleaders on matters of their own experience.
Speaker 1: Rarely is anyone but the interested party able to test
Speaker 1: the accuracy of a report. If the news is local,
Speaker 1: and if there is competition, the editor knows that he
Speaker 1: will probably hear from the man who thinks his portrait
Speaker 1: unfair and inaccurate. But if the news is not local,
Speaker 1: the corrective diminishes as the subject matter recedes into the distance.
Speaker 1: The only people who can correct what they think is
Speaker 1: a false picture of themselves printed in another city are
Speaker 1: members of groups well enough organized to hire publicitymen. Now,
Speaker 1: it is interesting to note that the general reader of
Speaker 1: a newspaper has no standing in law if he thinks
Speaker 1: he is being misled by the news. It is only
Speaker 1: the aggrieved party who can sue for slander or libel,
Speaker 1: and he has to prove a material injury to himself.
Speaker 1: The law embodies the tradition that general news is not
Speaker 1: a matter of common concern. Footnote the reader will not
Speaker 1: mistake this as a plea for censorship. It might, however,
Speaker 1: be a good thing, if there were competent tribunals, preferably
Speaker 1: not official ones, where charges of untruthfulness and unfairness in
Speaker 1: the general news could be sifted. See Liberty in the News,
Speaker 1: pages seventy three through seventy six, except as to matter
Speaker 1: which is vaguely described as immoral or seditious. But the
Speaker 1: body of the news, though unchecked as a whole by
Speaker 1: the disinterested reader, consists of items about which some readers
Speaker 1: have very definite preconceptions. Those items are the data of
Speaker 1: his judgment, and news which men read without this personal
Speaker 1: criterion they judge by some other standard than their standard
Speaker 1: of accuracy. They are dealing here with a subject matter which,
Speaker 1: to them is indistinguishable from fiction. The canon of truth
Speaker 1: cannot be applied. They do not boggle over such news
Speaker 1: if it conforms to their stereotypes, and they continue to
Speaker 1: read it if it interests them footnote note for example,
Speaker 1: how absent is indignation in mister Upton Sinclair against socialist papers,
Speaker 1: even those which are as malignantly unfair to employers as
Speaker 1: certain of the papers cited by him are unfair to radicals.
Speaker 1: There are newspapers, even in large cities, edited on the
Speaker 1: principle that the readers wish to read about themselves. The
Speaker 1: theory is that if enough people see their own names
Speaker 1: in the paper, often enough can read about their weddings, funerals, sociables,
Speaker 1: foreign travels, local meetings, school prizes, their fiftieth birthdays, their
Speaker 1: sixtieth birthdays, their silver weddings, their outings, and clam bakes.
Speaker 1: They will make a reliable circulation. The classic formula for
Speaker 1: such a newspaper is contained in a letter written by
Speaker 1: Horace Greeley on April third, eighteen sixty, to friend Fletcher,
Speaker 1: who was about to start a country newspaper. Footnote cite
Speaker 1: James Melvin Lee, The History of American Journalism, page four
Speaker 1: O five. Quote. Begin with a clear conception that the
Speaker 1: subject of deepest interest to an average human being is himself.
Speaker 1: Next to that, he is most concerned about his neighbors.
Speaker 1: Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after these.
Speaker 1: In his regard. Do not let a new church be organized,
Speaker 1: or new members be added to one already existing, a
Speaker 1: farm be sold, a new house raised, a mill set
Speaker 1: in motion, a store opened, nor anything of interest to
Speaker 1: a dozen families occur without having the fact duly, though briefly,
Speaker 1: chronicled in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree,
Speaker 1: or grows a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield
Speaker 1: of wheat or corn, set forth the fact as concisely
Speaker 1: and unexceptionally as possible. End quote the function of becoming,
Speaker 1: as mister Lee puts it, quote the printed dairy of
Speaker 1: the home town end quote is one that every newspaper,
Speaker 1: no matter where it is published, must in some measure fill,
Speaker 1: And where as in a great city like New York
Speaker 1: the general newspapers circulated broadcast cannot fill it, there exist
Speaker 1: small newspapers published on Greeley's pattern for sections of the city.
Speaker 1: In the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, there are
Speaker 1: perhaps twice as many local dailies as there are general
Speaker 1: newspapers footnote see John L. Gibbon Making a Newspaper, Page thirteen.
Speaker 1: And they are supplemented by all kinds of special publications
Speaker 1: for trades, religions, nationalities. These diaries are published for people
Speaker 1: who find their own lives interesting, but there are also
Speaker 1: great numbers of people who find their own lives dull
Speaker 1: and wish, like Hedda Gabler, to live a more thrilling life.
Speaker 1: For them, there are published a few whole newspapers and
Speaker 1: sections of others devoted to the personal lives of a
Speaker 1: set of imaginary people, with whose gorgeous vices the reader can,
Speaker 1: in his fancy safely identify himself. Mister Hurst's unflagging in
Speaker 1: interest in high society caters to people who never hope
Speaker 1: to be in high society, and yet manage to derive
Speaker 1: some enhancement out of the vague feeling that they are
Speaker 1: part of the life that they read about. In the
Speaker 1: great cities, the printed diary of the home town tends
Speaker 1: to be the printed diary of a smart set. And
Speaker 1: it is, as we have already noted, the dailies of
Speaker 1: the cities which carry the burden of bringing distant news
Speaker 1: to the private citizen. But it is not primarily their
Speaker 1: political and social news which holds the circulation. The interest
Speaker 1: in that is intermittent, and few publishers can bank on
Speaker 1: it alone. The newspaper therefore takes to itself a variety
Speaker 1: of other features, all primarily designed to hold a body
Speaker 1: of readers together, who, so far as big news is concerned,
Speaker 1: are not able to be critical. Moreover, in big news,
Speaker 1: the competition in any one community is not very serious.
Speaker 1: The press services standardize the main events. It is only
Speaker 1: once in a while that a great scoop is made.
Speaker 1: There is apparently not a very great reading public for
Speaker 1: such massive reporting, as has made the New York Times
Speaker 1: of recent years indispensable to men of all shades of opinion.
Speaker 1: In order to differentiate themselves and collect the steady public,
Speaker 1: most papers have to go outside the field of general news.
Speaker 1: They go to the dazzling levels of society, to scandal
Speaker 1: in crime, to sports pictures, actresses, advice to the lovelorn
Speaker 1: high school notes, women's pages, buyer's pages, cooking receipts, chess, whist, gardening,
Speaker 1: comic strips. Thundering partisanship. Not because publishers and editors are
Speaker 1: interested in everything but news, but because they have to
Speaker 1: find some way of holding on to that alleged host
Speaker 1: of passionately interested readers who are supposed by some critics
Speaker 1: of the press to be clamoring for the truth and
Speaker 1: nothing but the truth. The newspaper editor occupies a strange position.
Speaker 1: His enterprises depend upon indirect taxation levied by his advertisers
Speaker 1: upon his readers. The patronage of the advertisers depends upon
Speaker 1: the editor's skill in holding together an effective group of customers.
Speaker 1: These customers deliver judgment according to their private experiences and
Speaker 1: their stereotyped expectations for in the nature of things they
Speaker 1: have no independent knowledge of most news they read. If
Speaker 1: the judgment is not unfavorable. The editor is at least
Speaker 1: within range of a circulation that pays. But in order
Speaker 1: to secure that circulation he cannot rely wholly upon news
Speaker 1: of the greater environment. He handles that as interestingly as
Speaker 1: he can, of course, but the quality of the general news,
Speaker 1: especially about public affairs, is not in itself sufficient to
Speaker 1: cause very large numbers of readers to discriminate among the dailies.
Speaker 1: This somewhat left handed relationship between newspapers and public information
Speaker 1: is reflected in the salaries of newspaper men. Reporting, which
Speaker 1: theoretically constitutes the foundation of the whole institution, is the
Speaker 1: most poorly paid branch of newspaper work, and is the
Speaker 1: least regarded by and large able men go into it
Speaker 1: only by necessity or for experience, and with the definite
Speaker 1: intention of being graduated as soon as possible. For straight
Speaker 1: reporting is not a career that offers many great rewards.
Speaker 1: The rewards in journalism go to specialty work, to sign
Speaker 1: correspondence which has editorial quality, to executives, and to men
Speaker 1: with a knack and flavor of their own. This is
Speaker 1: due no doubt to what economists call the rent of ability.
Speaker 1: But this economic principle operates with such peculiar violence in
Speaker 1: journalism that news gathering does not attract to itself anything
Speaker 1: like the number of trained, enable men, which its public
Speaker 1: importance would seem to demand. The fact that the able
Speaker 1: men take up straight reporting with the intention of leaving
Speaker 1: it as soon as possible, is, I think the chief
Speaker 1: reason why it has never developed in sufficient measure those
Speaker 1: corporate traditions that give to a profession prestige and a
Speaker 1: jealous self respect. For it is these corporate traditions which
Speaker 1: engender the pride of craft, which tend to raise the
Speaker 1: standards of admission, punish breaches of the code, and give
Speaker 1: men the strength to insist upon their status in society.
Speaker 1: Yet all this does not go to the root of
Speaker 1: the matter. For while the economics of journalism is such
Speaker 1: as to depress the value of news reporting, it is
Speaker 1: i am certain, a false determinism which would abandon the
Speaker 1: analysis of that point. The intrinsic power of the reporter
Speaker 1: appears to be so great. The number of very able
Speaker 1: men who pass through reporting is so large, that there
Speaker 1: must be some deeper reason why, comparatively speaking, so little
Speaker 1: serious effort has gone into raising the vocation to the level,
Speaker 1: say of medicine, engineering, or law. Mister Upton Sinclair speaks
Speaker 1: for a large body of opinion in America. Footnote. Mister
Speaker 1: Hillair Belloch makes practically the same analysis for English newspapers
Speaker 1: see the Free Press when he claims that in what
Speaker 1: he calls the brass check, he has found this deeper
Speaker 1: reason quote The brass check is found in your pay
Speaker 1: envelope every week, you who write and print and distribute
Speaker 1: our newspapers and magazines. The brass check is the price
Speaker 1: of your shame. You who take the fair body of
Speaker 1: truth and sell it in the market place, who betray
Speaker 1: the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathesome brothel of
Speaker 1: big business. End quote footnote Upton Sinclair, The brass Check.
Speaker 1: A study of American journalism, page one sixteen. It would
Speaker 1: seem from this that there exists a body of known
Speaker 1: truth and a set of well founded hopes, which are
Speaker 1: prostituted by a more or less conscious conspiracy of the
Speaker 1: rich owners of newspapers. If this theory is correct, then
Speaker 1: a certain conclusion follows. It is that the fair body
Speaker 1: of truth would be inviolate in a press not any
Speaker 1: way connected with big business. For if it should happen
Speaker 1: that a press not controlled by and not even friendly with,
Speaker 1: big business, somehow fail to contain the fair body of truth,
Speaker 1: something would be wrong with mister Sinclair's theory. There is
Speaker 1: such a press strange to say in proposing a remedy,
Speaker 1: mister Sinclair does not advise his readers to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the nearest radical newspaper. Why not? If the troubles of
Speaker 1: American journalism go back to the brass check of big business?
Speaker 1: Why does not the remedy lie in reading the papers
Speaker 1: that do not in any remote way except the brass check.
Speaker 1: Why subsidize a national news with a large board of
Speaker 1: directors of all creeds or causes to print a paper
Speaker 1: full of facts regardless of what is injured, the Steel
Speaker 1: Trust or the International Workers of the World, the Standard
Speaker 1: Oil Company, or the Socialist Party. If the trouble is
Speaker 1: big business, that is, the Steel Trust, Standard Oil and
Speaker 1: the like, why not urge everybody to read the International
Speaker 1: Workers of the World or socialist papers. Mister Sinclair does
Speaker 1: not say why not, But the reason is simple. He
Speaker 1: cannot convince anybody, not even himself that the anti capitalist
Speaker 1: press is the remedy for the capitalist press. He ignores
Speaker 1: the anti capitalist press both in his theory of the
Speaker 1: brass check and in his constructive proposal. But if you
Speaker 1: are diagnosing American journalism, you cannot ignore it. If what
Speaker 1: you care about is the fair body of truth, you
Speaker 1: do not commit the gross logical error of assembling all
Speaker 1: the instances of unfairness and lying you can find in
Speaker 1: one set of newspapers, ignore all the instances you could
Speaker 1: easily find in another set, and then assign as the
Speaker 1: cause of the lying, the one supposedly common characteristic of
Speaker 1: the press to what you have confined your investigation. If
Speaker 1: you are going to blame capitalism for all the faults
Speaker 1: of the press, you are compelled to prove that those
Speaker 1: faults do not exist except where capitalism controls that. Mister
Speaker 1: Sinclair cannot do. This is shown by the fact that,
Speaker 1: while in his diagnosis he traces everything to capitalism, in
Speaker 1: him prescription he ignores both capitalism and anti capitalism. One
Speaker 1: would have supposed that the inability to take any non
Speaker 1: capitalist paper as a model of truthfulness and competence would
Speaker 1: have caused mister Sinclair and those who agree with him
Speaker 1: to look somewhat more critically at their assumptions. They would
Speaker 1: have asked themselves, for example, where is the fair body
Speaker 1: of truth that big business prostitutes, but anti big business
Speaker 1: does not seem to obtain? For that question leads, I believe,
Speaker 1: to the heart of the matter, to the question of
Speaker 1: what is news? End of Chapter twenty two.