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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75303 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                                STENTOR
+
+
+
+
+“The new spirit in the Press, which aims, not at influencing statesmen
+by giving them an instructed and enlightened public opinion, but at
+making them subservient to a power which will exalt them or hound them
+out of office, according to whether they will or will not accept its
+dictates and its terms.”
+
+
+“The insolent pretensions of newspaper owners to reduce Downing Street
+to the position of an annexe of Fleet Street.”
+
+                  ――_Certain People of Importance_, by A. G. GARDINER.
+
+
+The freedom of the Press is the freedom of public opinion, that’s the
+beginning and the end of it. Can you pretend that public opinion is
+free, when more than half the leading journals are the voice of one
+man? There is a danger to the freedom of the Press, Janion; and that
+danger is you. You are simply a trust crushing out or buying up all
+opposition, till you control the market――till you can sit in your
+office and say, “What I think to-day, England will think to-morrow.”
+
+                                        ――_The Earth_, by J. B. FAGAN.
+
+
+
+
+                                STENTOR
+
+                                  OR
+
+                          THE PRESS OF TO-DAY
+                             AND TO-MORROW
+
+                                  BY
+                             DAVID OCKHAM
+
+            “The abstract and brief chronicle of the time.”
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+
+                  E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC. : NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                       STENTOR, COPYRIGHT, 1928
+                      BY E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.
+               ALL RIGHTS RESERVED :: PRINTED IN U.S.A.
+
+
+                             First Edition
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS
+
+
+             CHAPTER                              PAGE
+                 I  THE BIRTH OF STENTOR             9
+                II  THE NATURE OF STENTOR           13
+               III  THE DICTATORS                   25
+                IV  THE MANNERISMS OF STENTOR       40
+                 V  THE NEWSPAPER OF TO-MORROW      48
+                VI  POISON GAS OR FRESH AIR         59
+                    APPENDIX                        66
+
+
+
+
+                                STENTOR
+
+
+
+
+                                   I
+
+                        _The Birth of Stentor_
+
+
+It is some eight thousand years ago that Man, having already set
+himself apart from the brute creation by walking on two legs and
+creating the art of speech, paved the way to the “best seller” by the
+invention of writing.
+
+The nomad settled in the village. From the village there grew the city.
+Empires rose, fell, and crumbled into decay. Plato, Homer, Aristotle,
+Dante, da Vinci, Shakespeare enlarged the boundaries of intellect and
+of emotion. America was rediscovered. Moveable types were introduced
+to Europe. And the newspaper, via the printed book and the pamphlet,
+sprang from the loins of Gutenberg. Grub Street gave place to Fleet
+Street, and the Carmelites to Carmelite House. Compulsory schooling
+for the masses produced a new social phenomenon in the shape of whole
+nations among whom the illiterate was the exception, and Demos roared
+voraciously for newsprint. And the halfpenny “daily” created a demand
+for the forest products of Newfoundland.
+
+So may our grandchildren condense their Outline of History.
+
+Historically considered, the Newspaper is an upstart, although its
+germs existed in the Roman Empire in the shape of _Acta Diurna_ and
+_Acta Publica_, Government publications which contained registers of
+births and deaths, and particulars of the corn supply and of payments
+into the Treasury. The _Acta_ even embodied so modern a feature as the
+Court Circular.
+
+Journalism found no incitement during the Dark and Middle Ages, and
+the use of moveable types at first stimulated the production of books
+rather than that of periodicals. By the latter half of the fifteenth
+century, rudimentary journals were, however, making their more or
+less regular appearance in Germany, Austria, and Italy, and embedded
+in Continental archives is to be found at least one copy of a
+contemporary account of Columbus’ voyages to America recorded while his
+journeyings still represented the latest news.
+
+The sixteenth century saw the _Gazzetta_, an Italian production in
+manuscript, to be read on payment of a _gazzetta_, a small coin of the
+period, which eventually gave its name as a synonym for newspapers
+and other publications. None of these Continental attempts to assuage
+the thirst for news seems, however, to have embodied the seeds of
+permanence, and the idea of a Newspaper in the modern sense, that is,
+of a publication issued at regular intervals and characterised by
+continuity in administration and policy, is largely English. The first
+regular English newspaper was the _Weekly News from Italy, Germany,
+etc._, founded in 1622, and nineteen years later an English paper
+secured a “scoop” by publishing a report of a Parliamentary debate for
+the first time on record. In 1709, London had its first daily under
+the title of the _Daily Courant_; the _Morning Post_ dates back to
+1772; and the _Times_, originally established as the _Daily Universal
+Register_, followed in 1785.
+
+It is almost impossible to assign a definite historical date for the
+inception of the newspaper as a regular institution created to satisfy
+a public demand, since so many of the journalistic pioneers were both
+of a fugitive and ephemeral nature, whilst others were pamphlets
+rather than news bulletins. But if we strike a mean between the _Daily
+Courant_ and the _Morning Post_, we may say that the newspaper has
+enjoyed some two centuries of vigorous life. It has thus witnessed the
+birth of the Industrial Age and of its offspring, Mechanical Transport,
+has seen the formation of the United States of America, the peopling
+of Canada and Australia, the fall of most European thrones, the
+development of great communities in South America, the birth of flying,
+and the shifting of the centre of gravity of political power from the
+semi-instructed few to the uninstructed many. If Stentor has lost his
+head a trifle at the contemplation of such an unparalleled record of
+human activity, and of a period pregnant with such almost unimaginable
+possibilities for good and evil, who shall wonder?
+
+
+
+
+                                  II
+
+                        _The Nature of Stentor_
+
+
+What is a newspaper? Ask any editor or proprietor, and he will tell
+you that its primary function is the dissemination of news, and
+its secondary, but none the less immensely important, task is that
+of commenting on the happenings of to-day or forecasting those of
+to-morrow, with the object of educating the community and guiding
+public opinion. So we are frequently informed, in rotund periods, by
+noble lords who respond to the toast of The Press at public feastings.
+
+What, actually, is a newspaper? To begin with, it contains
+advertisements, mainly of women’s dress, soaps, face creams and
+powders, chocolate, beer, whisky, tobacco, and motor cars. Democracy’s
+needs.
+
+Then there is a page of pictures, gathered at great expense from the
+ends of the earth, often transmitted by aeroplane, and providing a
+feast of new hats and evening wraps from Paris, railway accidents,
+shipwrecks, upturned tramcars and motor lorries that have fallen into
+ditches, the more or less recognisable portraits of men and women
+performing at the Divorce Courts or for some other reason temporarily
+in the public eye, photographs of film actresses, and pictures of the
+diversions of the Rich at the races, on the moors, on the Lido, and on
+the Riviera. Democracy’s peep-show.
+
+After these hors d’œuvres come the leading articles, letters to the
+editor, “nature notes” straight from Fleet Street, an instalment of a
+serial story depicting a life such as was never lived on land or sea,
+pictures which are believed to amuse the children, and “leader page
+articles” largely contributed (or at least signed) by doctors, divines,
+the wives of ex-Cabinet Ministers, Russian Princesses, actresses,
+and――occasionally――journalists.
+
+There are also articles in which women are instructed how to dress,
+cook, arrange a luncheon table, plan schemes of interior decoration,
+pack their trunks for a holiday, economise in the household, and retain
+the affection of their husbands.
+
+The residue is news.
+
+But not all of it.
+
+For much of this residue is news only in a specialised and restricted
+sense. City notes, produce market notes, the movements of shipping,
+and golf, bridge, gardening, or motoring notes do not appeal to every
+reader. Nor, for that matter, does literary criticism, or the critiques
+of plays, films, concerts, and picture exhibitions.
+
+But the residue of the residue is news. And that includes “gossip” by
+ladies and gentlemen apparently on terms of the utmost intimacy with
+Royalty and the nobility and gentry, the deaths of centenarians, the
+bright sayings of witnesses at police courts, the witty sayings of
+judges, the wise sayings of magistrates, and the futile sayings of
+coroners.
+
+Add a crossword puzzle, and you have a newspaper. Democracy’s Mentor.
+
+New inventions and institutions achieve popularity in accordance with
+the readiness with which they lend themselves to vulgarisation. So it
+has been with wireless and the kinema, and so it is with the Press.
+Cynics may say that every country has the newspapers it deserves, but
+that begs the question. The mass of the public undoubtedly likes its
+newspapers well enough (without having any very great respect for them)
+but it also likes novels and film plays entirely devoid of artistic
+value, just as it likes third-rate music and fourth-rate pictures. The
+real question is how far is popular taste natural, and how far has it
+been debauched by those who aim at giving the public what it wants,
+or what it is supposed to want. A brewer who succeeds in inducing his
+customers to acquire a taste for doctored or synthetic beer may be
+entitled to say that he is giving them what they like. But he is not
+entitled to say that they are incapable of appreciating unadulterated
+malt and hops, or that they would really prefer the genuine article if
+they were allowed a free choice between the two.
+
+When compulsory schooling led to an immense and sudden increase in
+the number of people able to read without difficulty, well-meaning
+enthusiasts rejoiced at the prospect of the artisan beguiling his
+leisure with Dante, Milton, Schopenhauer, Ruskin, Darwin, George Eliot,
+or the works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Actually, these newcomers to the
+world of letters turned mostly to the penny novelette and the “bitty”
+weekly. They might have patronised something better if the pioneers
+of reading matter for the million had made the experiment of seeing
+whether there was a market for something better. But the experiment was
+not made. And it was on the basis of a culture largely represented by
+the “snippety” weekly, that the creators of newspapers for the million
+began to build about a generation ago.
+
+Let it be conceded that their intentions were largely laudable. The
+appeal of the newspaper had previously been restricted to a degree
+almost incredible to contemporary men and women under thirty. The
+daily paper was the preserve of the well-to-do and the “comfortable
+classes”; the masses bought evening papers for racing tips and other
+sporting information, and on Sundays they were regaled with a ragôut of
+the murders, the robberies, the assaults, the divorces, and the more
+unsavoury police court cases of the week. Journals of international
+repute, such as the _Times_, the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Neue Freie
+Presse_, the _Journal des Débats_, sold fewer copies in a week than the
+popular organs now dispose of in a day.
+
+The Harmsworths, the Pearsons, the Hearsts, were to change all that. In
+order to make the daily paper a necessity, or a habit, of the masses,
+it was essential to depart from the pomposity of the older journals,
+with their long and platitudinous leading articles about nothing in
+particular, their unattractive “make-up,” their bald presentation of
+news, the immense length of their police court reports, and their
+adherence to the theory that the fall of a Cabinet in Patagonia was
+of more interest to the reader than a murder on his doorstep. The
+motto of the new Press was Brightness, Brevity, Enterprise, and
+Cheapness. It introduced photographs. It presented its news more
+attractively. It catered for the interests of women. It printed the
+light, but informative, article on topics of the day, often written
+by a specialist. It quickened up the transmission both of the news
+and of the newspaper. It aimed, in short, at mirroring passing events
+for the multitude rather than providing reading matter to be digested
+at leisure by the banker, the lawyer, the country gentleman, and the
+politician. And it succeeded remarkably――up to a point.
+
+But man cannot live by brightness alone. And brightness became a
+fetish. Insensibly, and on the whole probably unconsciously, at least
+at first, the newspaper made excessive sacrifices in the pursuit of its
+passion for the purely readable. It concentrated on the tabloid and the
+snippet. It plastered its pages with pictures, so that we have reached
+the stage at which if Dean Inge, Bernard Shaw, the ex-Kaiser, President
+Coolidge, Mr. Lloyd George, or Mr. Charles Chaplin be mentioned on
+six consecutive days of the week by the same paper, each mention will
+be accompanied by a photograph, usually the same photograph, the size
+of a postage stamp. Similarly, the obsession of the Press for “human
+interest stories” (a characteristic legitimate enough in itself) has
+been developed to the point at which the wives and mothers of condemned
+murderers are interviewed directly after the verdict with a request
+for their comments on the justice of the sentence, while respectable
+householders are despatched with cameras to photograph the tears of
+miners’ widows after a colliery accident.
+
+“Human interest” with a vengeance. But the worst feature of this
+vulgarisation of the popular Press is the resulting vulgarisation
+of the public. News editors would not instruct their reporters to
+interview divorcées, husbands whose wives have just been killed in
+motor accidents, or bereaved mothers, unless journalistic insistence
+as the “personal touch” had so greatly succeeded in banning decent
+reticence. The law does not punish such outrages on public taste,
+although it punishes many offences of far smaller detriment to the
+community.
+
+Side by side with vulgarisation is persistent falsification of
+values. The Press promotes mass hysteria, as is shown by the excesses
+accompanying the visits of American film stars to England or of
+European queens to the United States. It consistently denounces
+the very evils, or imaginary evils for whose creation it is itself
+so largely responsible, finding, for instance, good “copy” both in
+detailed descriptions of a play alleged to be lewd, and in criticisms
+of the same play by clergymen who have not seen it. And it is driving
+privacy from the world by its discovery of the new creed that if the
+pen be mightier than the sword, the camera is mightier than either.
+
+Insistence on the personal note has also brought in its train a
+Mumbo-Jumbo belief in the virtue of names. It is assumed that the
+public will attach more importance to an article signed with a name
+with which it is familiar than by an unsigned contribution, and
+although this theory is based on a certain element of fact, it is in
+practice overworked to the point of nausea. The reader will no doubt
+attach special importance to an article under the signature of Arnold
+Bennett, or H. G. Wells, especially if it deal with a subject with
+which the writer is particularly identified. He will also be more
+impressed by an article on tennis by Suzanne Lenglen than by an equally
+good but anonymous contribution. But is he equally impressed by the
+fact that a column of platitudes on motherhood, the contemporary
+young woman, or the decay of church-going, is signed by a, no doubt,
+estimable lady, whose only claim to public distinction is that she is
+the wife of an ex-Lord Mayor or the bearer of an obscure Hungarian
+title? Editors and proprietors apparently think so, thus indicating
+their cynical estimate of the level of public intelligence.
+
+Furthermore, this passion for names is responsible for the perpetration
+of the grossest frauds on the public. It is notorious in Fleet Street
+that articles alleged to be contributed by politicians, musical comedy
+actresses, film stars, and professional footballers are, in fact,
+often not written by the illustrious who are their reputed authors.
+Indeed, the illustrious are as like as not incapable of writing a page
+of grammatical English, as is also the case with the self-advertising
+commercial magnate, whose reputed views on economic questions or
+industrial co-operation, neatly typed and flanked by carefully
+touched-up photographs, descend on the desks of editors in the company
+of the pigeon-English letters of pushful publicity agents.
+
+But this fraud on the public, and there is no other name for a species
+of false pretence which is growing so rapidly that it is developing
+into an open scandal, is, relatively, a minor affair. The real evil
+is that the controllers of the Press, themselves largely amateurs,
+are going out of their way to encourage the incursion of the amateur
+into what is a highly-skilled and highly-complex avocation. And that
+constitutes the real false pretence. It does not matter very much
+whether that popular film comedienne, Miss Ruby Vamp, is actually
+responsible or not for the article on “Should Curates Charleston?”
+extensively and expensively advertised by the “Daily Dope.” But it
+does matter if the public be led to believe that an article on foreign
+relations written to order by a hack journalist for the purpose of
+provoking a sensation or promoting the policy of a newspaper proprietor
+should purport to be, and should be accepted, as from the pen of an
+impartial diplomatic expert, who has, in fact, only lent his name in
+return for money or for purposes of self-advertisement.[1]
+
+  [1] In December last, the Lawn Tennis Association passed
+      resolutions prohibiting a competitor in tournaments and
+      matches from writing articles thereon for the Press “under
+      his own name, initials, or recognisable pseudonym,” and also
+      from allowing a player to permit his name to be “advertised
+      as the author of any book or press article of which he is
+      not the actual author.” This resolution was boycotted by a
+      portion of the Combine Press, while one newspaper distorted
+      the attitude of the Association as representing “interference
+      with amateurs,” and “dictating to newspaper proprietors and
+      editors.” Imperence.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+
+                            _The Dictators_
+
+
+Few people understand the economic, still less the social, significance
+of Trusts and Combines. The public is familiar enough with the
+amalgamation of a number of more or less competing concerns engaged in
+the same industry; it is not so familiar with the conception of a Trust
+which owns or controls undertakings of widely-differing nature, such
+as the modern Combine which aims at controlling an article during the
+whole cycle of operations from the winning of the raw material to the
+marketing of the finished product. Still less is it familiar with the
+process whereby control, which is far more important than ownership,
+can be acquired by putting up quite a small proportion of the total
+capital invested in a commercial undertaking.[2]
+
+  [2] A large proportion of the capital of modern joint-stock
+      companies is provided by debenture-holders, who normally have
+      no voting rights whatever, and by preference share-holders,
+      who may vote at meetings only when their dividend has been in
+      arrears for a prescribed period. Even ordinary share-holders
+      may have no voting rights, and the entire control, including
+      the appointment of directors, can be vested in the owners of
+      a particular class of share representing less than a tenth of
+      the company’s total capital.
+
+It is as the result of control rather than actual ownership that the
+British Press has within the past few years largely come into the hands
+of some four or five men. The Independent Press has, in consequence,
+almost ceased to exist. There are still, of course, newspapers
+uncontrolled by Combines or Trusts, but these are in the main
+restricted alike as to circulation, influence, and the range of their
+geographical distribution. Moreover, independence of ownership does not
+necessarily mean independence of control by a political party in whose
+interests the paper is administered by its nominal owners.
+
+The “Trustification” of the Press is an entirely logical
+development, and has been accepted by the public in much the same
+way as amalgamations in any other industry. But there is a vital
+difference between a Newspaper Trust and a Beef Trust. The Newspaper
+Trust controls and manipulates public opinion. Its workings are
+largely subterranean. It is guided on occasion by purely political
+considerations to an extent impossible in any other industry. It may
+exercise a decisive influence on the issue of war or peace. Obviously,
+the control of a nation’s Press by a handful of men is not to be
+regarded in the same light as the control of its chemical industry. A
+“deal” in newspapers embodies, ultimately, a “deal” in the means of
+manipulating public opinion.
+
+In every industry, the appetite for amalgamation grows by what it
+feeds on. The tendency is for the immensely powerful and wealthy
+Newspaper Trusts to absorb more and more publications. Very often, a
+competing organ is bought only that it may be “killed,” as happened to
+London’s oldest evening paper, _The Globe_. Amalgamation is often only
+a euphemistic term for the disappearance of an old-established paper.
+The independent journals cannot withstand the tentacles of the Octopus.
+Either they are forced out of existence by sheer inability to stand up
+against their much wealthier rivals, or the owners are induced to sell
+by offers too tempting to refuse. In the latter instance, the matter
+has usually been decided on down to the last detail by the directors on
+both sides before the offer is submitted to the share-holders who are
+the nominal and legal owners of the property.
+
+The Dictators of Public Opinion thus enlarge their realm. It may be
+asked why, granted that the disappearance of existing Independent
+Newspapers is inevitable, new Independent organs do not make their
+appearance. The answer is that few undertakings involve the risk of
+such great loss, coupled with so much uncertainty and the necessity
+of putting up so much working capital to provide for possible losses
+during the first two or three years of existence, as the launching
+of a great newspaper. Excluding a journal subsidised by Labour
+organisations, only one serious attempt has been made in England during
+the last twenty years to found a new morning paper of national scope.
+It failed, after its millionaire proprietor had tired of losing money
+on the venture. The last attempt to establish a new London evening
+paper failed on the score of finance, distribution alone (_i.e._,
+getting the paper into the hands of readers after it had been printed)
+costing a thousand pounds a week. London, which is the journalistic
+centre of the United Kingdom (the small size of the country making
+possible the “nation-wide” newspaper, with which there is nothing
+really comparable in the United States), has actually far fewer morning
+and evening papers than twenty years ago.
+
+It has more Sunday papers. But that is one of the results of
+Trustification. By placing a Sunday paper under the same control as one
+or more morning and evening journals, overhead charges, which eat up
+money in the newspaper industry, are largely reduced. Administrative
+and mechanical costs are lowered. Each paper in the Combine can give
+free publicity to the rest. Distribution costs are shared. Against such
+conditions, the lone hand fights a losing battle, and economic factors
+operate as much against the creation of new Independent journals as
+they operate for the absorption of those still in existence.
+
+Since the armistice, the process of Trustification has undergone a
+remarkable acceleration. It has also entered on a new and immensely
+significant phase, the unification of control of publications of the
+most widely differing nature, thus bringing illustrated weeklies,
+fashion papers, monthly magazines, technical and trade journals,
+children’s weeklies and monthlies, and directories and other works of
+reference under the same ownership as morning, evening, and Sunday
+Newspapers. The modern Combine will even control the manufacture of its
+paper, and the supply of raw material for the purpose.[3]
+
+  [3] See Appendix.
+
+Such comprehensive Trustification may either assume the shape of
+complete amalgamation of separate companies, or be effected by the
+process known as unification of interests, in which a common control
+is brought about by such means as the presence of the same men, or
+their nominees, on the boards of companies which retain their corporate
+entity but are animated by a common policy and administered to serve
+common interests. The result is in either instance the same.
+
+The world has never known anything comparable. A handful of men,
+sitting over a luncheon table, can decree what the community is to
+think, what it is to be told, what it is not to be told. So we have
+reached the “Fordisation” of the intellect, which works through mass
+suggestion reinforced by damnable iteration. And this is mainly the
+work, not of men with missions, not of enthusiasts, or patriots, or men
+of culture, not even of journalists, but of men who have “gone into”
+the newspaper industry as they might have “gone into” the establishment
+of bacon-curing factories.
+
+Does it require a prophet to forecast the colossal influence of the
+Dictators on the opinions, the conduct, and the ideals of the next
+generation?
+
+For the process of Trustification cannot be arrested. Law and public
+opinion are alike powerless to stem it. No Anti-Trust legislation, as
+has been proved by America, is ever or can ever be of the smallest
+effect, since there are too many means of evading the spirit of
+the law while adhering to the letter. Interlocking directorates,
+ownership of shares carrying control over the entire undertaking,
+secret arrangements for pooling profits, are among the common methods
+adopted in order to set up a _de facto_ Trust when it may not be legal
+or politic to establish a Trust in name. Newspapers which succeed in
+maintaining a semblance of independent ownership and independent policy
+will thus be brought within the orbit of the Combines although they may
+nominally remain outside. The Trusts will become Super-Trusts, and the
+Press of the whole country may be dominated by two, three, or even one
+combine, with a single individual as Arch-Dictator.
+
+The process is inevitable, even if only for the reason that the
+splitting up of a Trust that has once been formed entails reduction
+in profits. Northcliffe, who was above and beyond everything else a
+journalist, aimed merely at the supreme control of the journals created
+by his genius. The contemporary Dictators, who are not journalists, aim
+at dominion over the whole field of the Press. They have already gone
+most of the way towards attaining their ambition.
+
+A special factor which has received very little consideration will
+operate in the near future towards the tightening of the stranglehold
+of the Press Combines. Trustification of the Newspaper Industry has
+recommended itself to financiers on the ground, _inter alia_, that
+it enables expenditure to be cut down. The history of nearly every
+industrial combine, excepting those affecting the Press, has since
+the armistice been one of profits that have failed to come up to the
+promoters’ estimates. In numerous instances, despite the considerable
+economies foreshadowed in the prospectus, earnings have been materially
+lower than those of the former separate undertakings now under
+one control. Indeed, the process of amalgamation or of acquiring
+controlling interests has during the past few years been in general
+disappointing to share-holders.
+
+Until now, the Newspaper Trusts have been more fortunate, partly
+because certain classes of advertisers have been induced to spend much
+more money, partly because of the economies effected by the wholesale
+discharge of staffs consequent on the so-called amalgamation of papers
+which have been bought only that they might be “killed”;[4] and in
+part because the results of acquiring share-holdings at fancy prices
+have yet to materialise.
+
+  [4] “_The Yorkshire Evening Argus_ having been amalgamated with
+      the _Bradford Daily Telegraph_, the Editor of the former paper
+      (Mr. J. W. Masters) confidently recommends the members of his
+      loyal and competent staff to all who need literary assistance,
+      and would be glad to receive applications from editors and
+      others having positions to offer.”――Advertisement in the
+      _Times_, December 15, 1926.
+
+This prosperity cannot be expected to last indefinitely. The newspaper
+brokers, that new class of financial intermediary which is playing
+so significant a part in the making of “deals” in public opinion,
+have done uncommonly well out of their buyings and sellings. They
+may still do well in the immediate future, but they have no concern
+with the ultimate prosperity of the industry. The future position of
+share-holders in the Press Trusts does not seem so assured as they
+imagine to-day. As profits decline, or fail to increase in accordance
+with expectations, the dictators will decree reductions in expenditure,
+beginning with the human material which has created their profits and
+their goodwill. The desire for economy, which is on the whole more
+likely to be attained by means of centralised administration than
+with a number of separate and individual undertakings, will obviously
+outweigh any arguments that might be brought forward in favour of
+“unscrambling” the Press Trusts, or splitting up the Combines into
+smaller undertakings. Furthermore, when the Trusts feel the pinch, or
+regard their profits as insufficiently bloated, the ambition to drive
+out what remains of the Independent Press will be accentuated, and yet
+more journals outside the Combines will be forced to surrender.
+
+With the process of Trustification has come a complete change in
+the character of the Controllers of the Press. Men such as Delane
+of the _Times_ were great editors, that is, great journalists, who
+stamped their impress on an age which still held to the belief that
+the editor was responsible for the editorial policy of his paper, and
+was something more than the mere paid servant of his proprietors, to
+be engaged and discharged as one “hires and fires” a scullery maid.
+Men such as Northcliffe (with all his faults a great man and one
+with a touch of that indefinable quality which we term genius) were
+possessed of creative ideas; they had vision and ideals; they saw in
+the newspaper something more than a mere instrument for money-making.
+If they made money it was not because it was their primary ambition to
+do so, or even because they particularly cared about money, but because
+their creations could not help attaining a considerable degree of
+material success.
+
+To-day, with negligible exceptions which are unlikely to be perpetuated,
+editors are merely hired servants. A. C. P. Scott is an exception.[5]
+Another Delane is an impossibility. Another Northcliffe is unthinkable,
+since the new Dictators have fashioned the rôle of the Press, and their
+own rôle, after a diametrically opposite conception.
+
+  [5] Editor of the _Manchester Guardian_, and controller of its
+      editorial policy.
+
+In the stead of the Delanes and the Northcliffes, we have control by
+self-seeking millionaires with a megalomaniac itch for interference. A
+dozen years ago, the spectacle of a newspaper proprietor expressing
+on the front page of his principal organ his entire disagreement with
+the opinions of his dramatic critic on an entirely undistinguished play
+would have been incredible. Such an outrage on taste is symptomatic
+of the dictatorship by the new Overlords of the Press. Here we have
+yet another manifestation of the amateur’s conception of journalism.
+Anyone, thinks the modern proprietor, can be a dramatic critic, a
+musical critic, a literary critic, a Parliamentary correspondent, an
+editor, especially if his name be known to the public in a capacity
+entirely unrelated to journalism. If he be a peer or possess a courtesy
+title, then he is the beau ideal of journalism.[6]
+
+  [6] “Anyone can write leading articles,” the author was once
+      solemnly assured by one of our best-known editors. He was
+      neither endeavouring to be humorous nor to be cynical; he was
+      merely expressing what the Conductors of the Press themselves
+      think of the Press which they conduct.
+
+Amateurishness and the love of interference also combine to give us
+the ponderous signed contributions with which newspaper proprietors
+regularly favour their own journals. Whether these articles are
+in every instance, or in any instance, actually written by their
+signatories, is a matter with which I have no immediate concern. But
+they are significant of the driving forces behind the modern Press
+Trust; they exemplify the rôle of the Press as an engine of propaganda,
+self-advancement, and self-advertisement, for its millionaire owners.
+
+To quote Mr. St. John Ervine:
+
+    “We know there are certain demented millionaires who own
+    newspapers and will write for them; and when one of these men
+    writes an article, the staff hides its head and goes about the
+    rest of the week explaining it away. We (the journalists) are
+    the paper. We are the goodwill of the paper, and when they
+    sell a paper they sell what we have made. When they sell what
+    we have made and say ‘We don’t want you any more,’ we should
+    be regarded as the first charge on the price of that paper.
+    We have known proprietors who have ruined papers. Such a man
+    should be in gaol for ruining a good business.... Editors used
+    to put the proprietors of newspapers in their place, and there
+    is no reason why it should not be done again.”
+
+Mr. Ervine, it may be added, made these remarks at a meeting convened
+by the Institute of Journalists on December 11, 1926, under the
+chairmanship of Sir Robert Bruce, editor of the _Glasgow Herald_. His
+remarks were, of course, boycotted by the leading organs of the Press
+Trust.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV
+
+                      _The Mannerisms of Stentor_
+
+
+A problem for the consideration of the Dictators of the Press is
+that of reconciling the up-to-date nature of the modern newspaper
+in most respects with its extraordinary conservatism in others,
+an inconsistency that affords genuine amusement to the student of
+contemporary life and manners. The Press is still old-fashioned enough
+to regard Woman (with a very large “W”) as a remarkable creature that
+has only just been discovered. Her slightest and most inconsequential
+doings are regarded as of the most compelling interest. “Women Present
+at Football Match” declaim the headlines, and the game is immediately
+vested with a special and romantic atmosphere.[7]
+
+  [7] I do not dilate on this theme, since it has so admirably
+      been expounded by Rose Macaulay, who is human enough to rebel
+      against her sex being treated by the Press as though it were
+      almost human.
+
+Again, we have progressed beyond the “Book of Snobs,” but “public
+schoolboy,” “old Etonian,” “wife of Ex-M.P.,” and “Colonel” are still
+imagined by sub-editors to be invested in the reader’s mind with
+an aura denied to the mass of human beings. As for members of the
+nobility, let an amiable and undistinguished peer die of heart failure
+in his eightieth year, or collide in his motor car with a taxi-cab, and
+the news is conveyed to a bored public by means of special contents
+bills. For the public is bored, when it is not disgusted, by these
+endeavours to make the world safe for Snobocracy. Yet a journalist who
+attempted to point out that both social values and news values had
+altered since the days of the Great Exhibition, and, in particular,
+since the Great War, would be told that he did not know his business
+and that he was most certainly a Bolshevik.
+
+Again, while proprietors and editors long ago realised the implication
+of Northcliffe’s discovery that Woman was a creature of sufficient
+intelligence and curiosity to read a newspaper (even if only for the
+advertisements of drapers), they still regard her in the light of
+an intellectual crétin so far as concerns the provision of reading
+matter. If any critic consider this statement too severe, let him――or
+her――concentrate exclusively for the next two days on the fashion and
+“Society” columns and the “Woman’s Pages” of the Popular Press.
+
+Moreover, the editorial conception of women is that they are without
+exception possessed of inexhaustible means, leisure, and ability to
+make holiday at expensive resorts all the year round and to attend all
+the costliest “functions” as a matter of course. No other explanation
+of the fatuous drivel offered up for the special delectation of female
+readers offers itself to the reasoning mind.
+
+Do you think I have been unfair? Then read this characteristic
+paragraph from an evening paper, headed “Earnest Young Women”:
+
+    “It must not be thought that the American girl merely dances
+    her way through life. Not at all. She must have variety,
+    therefore she dabbles lightly in art, literature, politics, or
+    philanthropy. She has days for visiting hospitals or other
+    institutions or she makes political speeches as Miss Barbara
+    Sands, grand-daughter of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, has been
+    doing recently, and as Sarah Murray Butler does all the time,
+    or she even takes up business in her odd moments, like Elinor
+    Dorrance, who at eighteen has decided to know all about the
+    famous Campbell soups company of which her father is head and
+    which she will inherit.”
+
+This is not parody. It is the real thing, complete with snobbishness,
+clichés, naïveté, and the conviction that it doesn’t in the least
+matter how you write or what you write about so long as you are writing
+for other women. And it is published in a paper whose owners lay stress
+on the fact that it caters especially for intelligent and cultured
+womanhood.
+
+“The famous Campbell soups company.” “Famous” is the sub-editor’s
+favourite word,[8] applied by him with unwearying zeal to all men and
+women who have ever got themselves in the public eye――unless they are
+really famous――applied even to furniture polishes, blends of whisky,
+and popular cigarettes. The sub-editor, that romantic soul, also
+assumes that the normal behaviour of the notorious or the merely
+well-known is flamboyant, so that when they manage their affairs
+without limelight they are “quietly married,” or they “leave quietly”
+for their honeymoon. The one thing the Press will in no circumstances
+permit them to do is to die quietly.
+
+  [8] “Amazing,” “mystery,” “thrilling,” and “dramatic” are also
+      hot favourites in the Stock Phrase Stakes.
+
+Is it not time that the pages of the Press were one quarter so
+up-to-date as the machinery which prints them? and that “journalese”
+should cease to be a synonym for the vapid, the crude, the provincial,
+and the semi-illiterate?
+
+Impartiality being even rarer than commonsense, no one would be foolish
+enough to demand from a newspaper either complete lack of bias, or the
+presentation with equal prominence of both sides of a controversial
+case. Such impartiality would be contrary to human nature. But natural
+prejudice does not necessarily involve the deliberate distortion of
+news.
+
+News can be, and is, habitually manipulated both by distortion and
+suppression. The first procedure is, on the whole, less objectionable,
+since a little knowledge on the part of a reader will often enable him
+to realise that a case is being overstated. Moreover, he may allow for
+the known political complexion of a journal. Suppression assumes two
+shapes, partial and complete. The latter, which is the more unusual,
+comes into play when a newspaper does not find it convenient or politic
+to give publicity to events or ideas, but this reticence does not
+necessarily spring from sinister or interested motives. Indeed, it may
+simply be because the news editor, who lives in a curious world of
+his own, often remote from the contacts of the outer world, and who
+is avid only of stereotyped sensations, fails to recognise news when
+it is thrust under his nose. In such instances, a rival may possibly
+recognise “news value.” Or again, he may not.
+
+This partial suppression, of which the Socialist newspapers are quite
+as guilty as the so-called “Capitalist Press” denounced by them for the
+practice, is one of the deadliest weapons in the armoury of journalism.
+Let it be clearly understood that we are concerned here not so much
+with a matter of unfairness or injustice to an individual or a section
+of the community, as with injustice to the community as a whole, which
+is deliberately and systematically deprived of knowledge of all the
+facts necessary to form a judgment regarding the issues at stake in a
+question which may affect the national well-being.
+
+For instance, it is impossible for the average newspaper reader to
+form a detached opinion of the rights and wrongs of a coal strike.
+The miners’ wages are alternatively exaggerated and minimised;
+exceptionally high earnings in the coal fields are paraded as typical
+of the average for the industry as a whole; or the earnings of coal
+hewers are represented at much below the real level on the strength
+of figures including the wages of boys and surface workers. All these
+facts are readily available and accessible in any modern newspaper
+office. But only a selection of them is published by any one paper.
+
+Again, to take an example of complete suppression, the curtain may
+never be lifted by the Press on a political or other scandal of which
+the exposure is emphatically in the public interest. Such a boycott
+may be just as much due to the belief that the subject has no news
+value as to any ulterior reasons. But the injury to the community is
+the same in either event. Newspaper readers are not concerned with the
+motives animating editors and proprietors; they _are_ concerned with
+the results of those motives.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+
+                     _The Newspaper of To-Morrow_
+
+
+The professional will not, of course, be entirely eliminated from
+journalism. Despite their love of the amateur, newspaper proprietors
+realise that his place is not among the reporters, the news editors,
+the sub-editors, the financial editors, or the “art editors”――whose
+concern lies not with art, but with news photographs. As to editors,
+that is another matter. The rôle of editor tends more and more to
+become that of conduit pipe between staff and proprietary, whose views
+and policy he is called on to expound and further. So that the amateur
+will add the editorial chair to his Press conquests. Indeed, he has
+already made a beginning.
+
+One figures the popular “dailies” of the next decade, with their
+signed articles by film stars, politicians, jockeys, footballers,
+tennis players, and racing motorists. One visualises their Women’s
+Page, Beauty Hints, and Guide to the Fashions, ostensibly conducted
+by popular actresses whose time is already fully occupied in meeting
+the conflicting claims of the Stage and of “Society.” One foresees
+the daily sermon by the proprietor’s pet divine, and the daily health
+article by the medical man who regards the stylo as more lucrative
+than the scalpel. One foresees also an immense increase in the
+number of photographs and other pictures, aided by the development
+of telephotography, television, and air transport. The motorist, the
+golfer, the collector of antique furniture, the amateur gardener, the
+investor, will find more space devoted to their special interests.
+There may even be room for an increase in the amount of space (if
+not of the quality) devoted to book reviews, although this forecast
+is admittedly optimistic. (What the public is supposed to want is
+not literary criticism, but “gossip” about the personal habits, the
+clothes, the recreations, the holidays, and the monetary earnings of
+authors.)
+
+The leading articles will remain, partly through conservatism, and in
+part because of their utility for purposes of propaganda and “uplift.”
+The serial story will improve in quality, since that is one of the
+logical sequences of the passion for well-known names. More and larger
+prizes will be awarded for guessing contests and other competitions.
+The scope of newspaper insurance will be extended, although this
+function may ultimately be curtailed or even cease when the process of
+Trustification has gone so far that individual journals will no longer
+be under the necessity of trying to abstract each others’ readers.
+The pictures and stories for the nursery (and what the nursery really
+thinks of some of these efforts for its entertainment would surprise
+their purveyors) will be raised to the dignity of a whole page,
+complete with editor, the latter probably the wife of an ex-Cabinet
+Minister. The Sabbath will be kept holy by an increase in the space
+devoted to autobiographies of contemporary criminals and the retelling
+of old crimes. In short, the Newspaper will have travelled a stage
+further on the road to supplant the book, to supplement the playhouse.
+
+It is pertinent at this point to refer to one of the seeming paradoxes
+of the modern Press, the diminution of its influence as its circulation
+and wealth have increased. Strictly speaking, the process has rather
+been one of a shifting of the centre of influence. When circulations
+were small, readers belonged to the influential classes. A leading
+article in the _Times_ could cause the Cabinet to reflect, could
+influence European chancelleries, could even exercise a definite effect
+on projected legislation. In much the same way as the importance of the
+individual voter has diminished with every broadening of the basis of
+the franchise, so has the nature of the old influence of the Press on
+public affairs declined with growth in circulations.
+
+“Government by newspaper” has been denounced by politicians when
+the views expressed by a journal have not happened to coincide with
+theirs, but hitherto it is the endeavour rather than the realisation
+which has been criticised. A newspaper can and does influence the
+Cabinet in relatively unimportant matters, such as the propriety of
+commercial advertising by post-mark; it no longer succeeds in swaying
+the Administration in the matter of a first-class legislative measure,
+or in inducing it to sanction a reform or a change desired by the
+majority of electors; despite almost unanimous newspaper criticism of
+the retention of certain war-time regulations, such as those governing
+the hours during which it is licit to sell chocolate or cigarettes, the
+Home Secretary is still able to say that he is so far unaware of any
+widespread public demand for a relaxation of these restrictions.[9]
+
+  [9] Since this has been written, a committee has been set up to
+      inquire into the regulations in question.
+
+But against the decline in the direct political influence of the Press
+there has to be set the growth of its influence over the community.
+The expansion both of circulations and of the field of interests
+catered for by the newspaper, already touched on in these pages, has
+helped immensely to develop the “newspaper habit.” It is a matter
+of elementary psychology that the average man and woman cannot help
+being influenced by the day-to-day exposition of political and other
+questions in the columns of their newspapers. Let any journal adopt
+the consistent policy of blackening the leaders of Soviet Russia
+or belauding Mussolini, and the infamy of the Bolsheviks or the
+disinterestedness and greatness of the Italian dictator becomes a
+creed to hundreds of thousands. Let the whole Press unite in the same
+shout, and that is the tendency under its present controllers, and the
+result is mass suggestion of a nature and intensity which causes the
+Press to mould the public opinion of whole nations. So that although an
+individual newspaper or a combination of newspapers may be powerless
+directly to affect the policy of a Cabinet, it is daily operating to
+sway the minds of the people and thus, indirectly, to sway Governments
+through the ultimate effect of mass suggestion in action during the
+period of a general election or a political crisis.
+
+And this is the work of a handful of men who――it is no reproach to
+them――are temperamentally unfitted for the enormous responsibilities
+which they have assumed so light-heartedly, so casually――as casually as
+though they were “cornering” chewing gum.
+
+Newspaper proprietors assert that in fact, their editors have a
+free hand, and attempt to prove this contention by pointing to
+differences in policy or treatment manifested by newspapers under
+the same control. One is at some difficulty in deciding whether this
+argument is the fruit of ingenious or of merely ingenuous minds. The
+_Evening Standard_, for instance, may not see eye to eye with the
+_Daily Express_ in such matters as the morality of modern dancing or
+the retention of old churches in the City of London, but a strike, a
+political crisis, a general election, the issue of war or peace, will
+witness a unanimity of editorial comment which goes beyond the limits
+of sheer coincidence. The _mot d’ordre_ has been given.
+
+The Press of to-morrow will have to regard wireless and the kinema as
+potential rivals. Both occupy a position analogous to the newspaper,
+inasmuch as their popularity is largely due to the lack of mental
+resources in the average man and woman, and their active disinclination
+to read anything calling for concentration or sustained effort. The
+Popular Press, Broadcasting and the “Movies” are alike variants of
+the “Daily Dope.” Furthermore, the Press has itself largely helped to
+popularise its potential competitors through the immense publicity
+which it accords them.
+
+In England, broadcasting has hitherto not trenched on the province
+of the newspaper because of the archaic restrictions imposed on the
+transmission of news by wireless, which is virtually limited to a brief
+re-hash of the evening papers, together with weather forecasts. But
+it is impossible that these restrictions will be allowed to prevail
+indefinitely, even if only for the reason that “listeners-in” are able
+to compare the service with that provided by Continental broadcasting
+agencies, who are not fettered by the Mandarins of the Post Office. As
+a matter of fact, the new British Broadcasting Corporation, which is
+a Government Department, possesses powers to do almost anything that
+can be done by a newspaper. Some of those powers it will certainly
+use, and there is nothing to prevent the Corporation from adding to
+its functions that of purveyor of propaganda for the Government of
+the day. The transmission of official news, and the development of an
+Inter-Empire news service it will certainly undertake.
+
+But these are relatively minor matters. The real competitive
+possibilities of wireless lie in the fact that it brings the outer
+world into the homes of the millions at precisely those hours between
+the publication of the latest evening paper and the appearance of the
+morning paper at the breakfast-table. As the bulk of the contents of a
+morning paper are printed well before midnight, wireless transmission
+of news from seven o’clock in the evening until eleven or twelve would
+skim the cream off the next day’s papers. Whether the Press should
+retaliate by establishing a wireless service of its own (impossible
+in England save by means of coöperation with the British Broadcasting
+Corporation, which possesses a double-riveted, State-enforced monopoly)
+or by issuing later editions of the evening papers than is now
+customary, will become a matter for the consideration of its conductors.
+
+For, insofar as concerns the dissemination of news, the wireless can
+clearly do as well as, if not better, than the newspaper. And it can
+do it at smaller cost to the subscriber. No one would, of course,
+seriously suggest that wireless transmission of news will drive the
+newspapers out of business, or even that it will seriously affect
+their circulation or revenue. But it is obvious that if broadcasting
+compete with the Press in the publication of news (and the Press will
+be powerless to stop it in England and unable to do so elsewhere unless
+wireless be brought within the scope of Newspaper Trusts) then the
+Press must strengthen its hold on the public in those fields where
+wireless cannot compete, or cannot compete so well. So it will enlarge
+its field of comment. It will become more and more of a miscellany.
+It will devote more and more attention to crusades and “uplift.” It
+will become more and more of a pulpit, and a lecture theatre for the
+physician. Above all, it will more and more strive to mould public
+opinion.
+
+The rivalry of the Kinema will be of a subtler and less direct nature.
+Both the Popular Press and the “Pictures” appeal largely to a class
+which is easier to reach through the eye than through an appeal to the
+intellect, which demands a little imagination. The popular newspapers
+have lately begun to break out in a pictorial eczema throughout their
+pages. But the kinema, with its extremely well-organised service for
+recording and exhibiting events of the hour, leaves the newspaper miles
+in the rear. An evening paper can print photographs of the Derby or the
+Boat Race within a few minutes of their being taken. But it cannot show
+the whole progress of the race within a couple of hours after it has
+been run. Television, already a scientific achievement, and to-morrow
+a possible “commercial proposition,” will also come to the aid both
+of the Kinema and the Wireless. How does the Press propose to meet
+the actualities of the picture theatre and the possibilities of new
+inventions for the photographic recording and reproduction of events?
+
+
+
+
+                                  VI
+
+                       _Poison Gas or Fresh Air_
+
+
+The Trustification of the Press has gone further in England than
+in America or on the Continent, partly because of such specially
+favourable conditions as the small size of the country, the excellence
+of its communications, and the presence of an exceptionally large
+proportion of the population within a radius of a score of miles from
+the centre of the capital. But there is nothing to suggest that other
+countries represent more favourable soil for the continued propagation
+of an Independent Press.
+
+As has been said, neither legislation nor public opinion is competent
+to arrest the progress of combination, or to operate against Combines
+already in existence. Incidentally, the awakening has come too late,
+and although there is in this instance no lack of wisdom after the
+event, the utmost that it can effect is to instruct the community as to
+the nature and control of its newspapers. It is powerless to vary the
+nature of either. There are, it is true, alternatives to the Trust in
+the shape of Government control or ownership on behalf of a political
+party or group[10], but these merely oppose one form of dictatorship
+to another. Such control is characterised by no real independence,
+which obviously, cannot exist in the case of a Government organ.
+Political or Governmental control is, it is true, less objectionable
+from many standpoints than control by a Trust, while it also possesses
+the negative advantage that identity of ownership is usually less easy
+to camouflage. But such journals are not and cannot be independent.
+In the long run, the same vices of partiality, suppression, and
+distortion are present in a newspaper whose aim is the support of
+a political party or group as in one belonging to a Trust, while a
+Government organ has no other raison d’être than that of a vehicle
+for thinly-disguised propaganda. Possibly, the future may see more
+of Governments as newspaper owners, even if only during periods of
+national emergency, such as strikes or wars.[11]
+
+  [10] Last year, the _Journal des Débats_ was sold to a banker and
+       an ironmaster (the former is Baron Edouard de Rothschild),
+       both of whom hold strong views on the revalorisation of the
+       franc. The London _Daily Chronicle_, in which the controlling
+       interest had previously been held by Mr. Lloyd George, passed
+       at the end of 1926 into the control of another Liberal group,
+       and into the ownership of a company of which Lord Reading is
+       the chairman. Some months earlier, the Government of the
+       German Reich acquired the _Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_,
+       which had been acquired by the Prussian Government the
+       previous year.
+
+  [11] During the General Strike of 1926, the British Government
+       maintained a daily paper, which was conducted under the
+       personal supervision of Mr. Winston Churchill.
+
+But if legislation and public opinion be powerless to check the growth
+of Combines, the more intelligent section of the public, aided by
+those few influential journals that have still eluded the tentacles
+of the Octopus, is at last disturbed in its mind. Trustification of
+the Press has come to be regarded as a public danger, and as of still
+worse omen for the future. It is conceived of as a menace by the
+politician――always hostile to and ready to impute sinister motives to
+any journal which fails to praise him――who visualises the possibilities
+of all the battalions of the Press Czars suddenly being arrayed
+against his party. Its dangers have been perceived by the commercial
+community. Any Government which fails to reckon with the sudden
+conversion of a Press, yesterday friendly but mobilised against it
+to-day as the result of overnight change of ownership, personal spite,
+or thwarted ambition, is singularly unfit to govern, even in an age of
+incapable and hand-to-mouth administrations.
+
+The malady has thus at least been diagnosed. But the patient is not
+easily curable. The Combines can be challenged only by comparable
+weight of metal, and they are entrenched too firmly to render
+attractive any attempt at competition. It almost seems, therefore,
+as though the community must resign itself to Stentor, with his
+vulgarities, his inanities, his subservience to the whims and interests
+of his owners, and his greed for profits and yet more profits.
+
+Given, however, a sufficiently aroused degree of public opinion――and
+here we are dealing with the incalculable and the unpredictable――and
+a remedy is not entirely lacking. One of the most characteristic
+and creditable features of the history of the Press is the great
+influence that has been exercised in the past by organs of small or
+relatively small circulation and revenue, daily, weekly, and monthly.
+Some of these still exist, and although both their influence and their
+independence have largely departed, they yet stand as sign-posts on the
+road to defeating the complete monopoly of the Trust Press.
+
+Courage and public spirit are admittedly required for a revival of
+independence in journalism, but the prospect is not without its promise
+of reasonable financial gain in addition to that of less tangible
+rewards. Intelligent men and women are daily becoming more disgusted
+with a Press that sets sensation before truth and has raised vulgarity
+to the level of an exact science. Even if the Dictators should realise
+the existence of this attitude――and they have no criteria beyond
+circulation and revenue――they would be unable to meet it. You can do
+many things to and with a newspaper, but you cannot change its spirit
+overnight with the same ease as one of our most widely-circulated
+journals once swung round in twenty-four hours from the advocacy of a
+Protective tariff to the championship of Free Trade because its earlier
+attitude was considered to be unpopular among its patrons.
+
+Circulation and advertising revenue (the advertiser provides the
+real profits) are the twin gods of the Dictators, as the reduction
+of expenditure is their prophet. Thinking in terms of millions, they
+are temperamentally incapable of realising the influence of journals
+appealing only to thousands, just as they conceive influence to be
+synonymous with circulation, although some of the “best sellers”
+among our daily and Sunday papers are singularly destitute of any
+real influence over the drugged minds of their readers. So there
+is scope for the re-emergence of the independent organ of the type
+which has demonstrated in the past that great influence may go hand
+in hand with small circulation and an inconsiderable revenue from
+drapery advertisements, provided that its conductors are informed
+with sincerity, fearlessness, and ideals, and refuse to regard the
+shibboleths of the minute as divine revelations.
+
+And if such a Press do not emerge from behind the smoke screen and the
+poison gas ejected by Stentor, then Democracy will have the newspapers
+it deserves.
+
+Let it be emphasised that the objections on public grounds to the
+Trustification of the Press are based even more on the future than
+on present conditions. The Dictators of to-day may be high-souled
+patriots, men of vision, men alive to the measure of their
+responsibilities. The Dictators of to-morrow may be mercenary
+profit-seekers, reactionaries, men who use their newspapers as weapons
+in the fight against decent housing or fair wages, or who bring up
+their battalions in aid of campaigns to starve education or foment war.
+There is nothing to prevent the Press of this or any other country from
+coming under the financial control of armament makers, international
+traffickers in drugs, or wealthy men who desire the perpetuation of the
+slum. There is nothing to prevent its domination by aliens or the worst
+type of “market-rigging” financier.
+
+That is to say, there is nothing save public opinion, which is itself
+hamstrung by the passing of the Independent Press.
+
+
+
+
+                              _APPENDIX_
+
+
+The growth of the Newspaper Combine has become so complex, with
+its interlocking directorates and the holdings of one company in
+another, that details would weary the reader. But in order that he may
+understand the process, the following is given as a typical example.
+
+The Amalgamated Press, of which Sir William Berry is chairman, was
+formed at the end of last year to take over another undertaking of
+the same name. This is one of the Northcliffe ventures, which grew so
+amazingly that it eventually owned over a hundred weekly, fortnightly,
+monthly and annual publications; ten libraries; the Waverly Book Co.
+Ltd., which is concerned with educational publications; the Radio
+Press, Ltd.; two other publishing concerns; and controlling interests
+in one of the largest paper-making concerns in the country and in a
+Canadian paper company owning over a thousand square miles of timber
+land. The new company also took over a dozen publications from Cassell
+& Co. Ltd.
+
+Sir William Berry is also the chairman of Allied Newspapers, Ltd.,
+which owns the share capital in Allied Northern Newspapers, Ltd., and
+owns or controls the London _Sunday Times_, and a considerable number
+of morning, evening and Sunday papers in Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow
+and elsewhere, including the _Daily Despatch_, the _Sunday Chronicle_,
+the _Empire News_, the _Daily Record_, and the _North Mail and
+Newcastle Daily Chronicle_. At the end of last year, the company also
+agreed to buy all the ordinary shares in the Daily Sketch and Sunday
+Herald, Ltd.
+
+This list is far from giving a complete record of Sir William Berry’s
+interests, which also include the chairmanship of the companies
+owning the _Financial Times_ and the _Western Mail_, the latter one
+of the leading newspapers in the West of England. But the details
+are sufficient to illustrate the process whereby publications of the
+most varied nature and influence, and appealing to specialised local
+interests all over the country as well as to the public as a whole,
+have been and are being brought under a common control.
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+ ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+ ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
+
+ ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75303 ***