The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stentor
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Stentor
or, The press of to-day and to-morrow
Author: David Ockham
Release date: February 6, 2025 [eBook #75303]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1928
Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STENTOR ***
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 STENTOR ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
