made it look like the sort of low-comedy stuff to which his mind was attuned. The newspaper that goes in for entertainment at all costs is bound to distort the news, because it leaves out much that is important but not entertaining, and puts in much that is entertaining but not important. If General Dawes, at a Congressional hearing, speaks his mind vigorously about critics of the A.E.F., that is important news. If, in doing so, he uses highly picturesque profanity, that makes for entertainment. To put in the profanity and leave out the argument might, make the story more brisk, but it would be misrepresenting General Dawes and the significance of what he said.
Writing recently of the treatment, of Parliamentary news by the Northcliffe press, Mr. A. G. Gardiner, formerly editor of the London Daily News, said, 'Parliament was treated as a music-hall turn. If it was funny, it was reported; if it was serious, it was ignored. . . . The Midlothian Campaign of Gladstone, which used to fill pages of the newspapers, would to-day be dismissed in an ill-reported halfcolumn summary, devoted, not to the argument, but to the amusing asides and the irrelevant, interruptions.' The same thing might be said of the Washington correspondence of ail too many American newspapers. What makes socalled yellow journalism really dangerous is not so much its appetite for scandal as its continual distortion of the news in t he interest of undiluted entertainment.
III
Sometimes, it must be admitted, misrepresentation is brought about, not by the inherent difficulty of stating the facts without prejudice, not by ignorance, carelessness, or the desire to entertain, but by deliberate intention. The newspaper profession is made up of all sorts of people, some of whom eagerly seize opportunities to present the news so as to favor their friends and put in an unfavorable light their enemies — personal, political, and economic. It is this practice which that extraordinary diatribe, The Brass Check, by Mr. Upton Sinclair, is devoted to exposing. Mr. Sinclair cites case after case in which the press has falsified the news, and comes to the conclusion that, the newspapers are in a plot to twist the news to their own ends, and thus to serve the purposes of capital.
It is a pretty safe plan to take with several grains of salt most allegations regarding the existence of widespread conspiracies. We have been fed to repletion lately with supposed conspiracies of radicals, Bolsheviki, Jews, and so forth, and we are happily beginning to acquire some common sense. To my mind the evidence of misrepresentation collected by Mr. Sinclair and by other critics of the press proves, not that there is any conspiracy among newspaper men to withhold the truth from the public, but merely that, newspaper owners, editors, and reporters are fallible; actuated too often by self-interest; too often ready to take the ‘practical’ view of things and to see on which side their bread is buttered; too often inclined to fight by illegitimate means what they dislike; and too often subject to those surges of mob-feeling that lead men to pillory those whom they detest.
Take, for example, that part of Mr. Sinclair’s book in which he tells of his own unfortunate experiences with the press. It shows with what glee newspaper men — like other ordinary mortals — will sometimes join the pack to hunt t hose whom they dislike. Mr. Sinclair is unpopular with t he press. When he founds Helicon Hall, a cooperative ‘home colony’; when he gets into difficulties with the Delaware authorities
