THE TYRANNY OF BAD JOURNALISM

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE TYRANNY OF BAD JOURNALISM, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
An eText from LiteratureClassics.com.

Please see the eText readme for important copyright information (available from the options menu above if you are browsing online or as a separate file in the archive if you are browsing offline.)



The amazing decision of the Government to employ methods quite alien to
England, and rather belonging to the police of the Continent, probably
arises from the appearance of papers which are lucid and fighting, like
the papers of the Continent. The business may be put in many ways. But
one way of putting it is simply to say that a monopoly of bad journalism
is resisting the possibility of good journalism. Journalism is not the
same thing as literature; but there is good and bad journalism, as there
is good and bad literature, as there is good and bad football. For the
last twenty years or so the plutocrats who govern England have allowed the
English nothing but bad journalism. Very bad journalism, simply
considered as journalism.

It always takes a considerable time to see the simple and central fact
about anything. All sorts of things have been said about the modern Press,
especially the Yellow Press; that it is Jingo or Philistine or
sensational or wrongly inquisitive or vulgar or indecent or trivial; but
none of these have anything really to do with the point.

The point about the Press is that it is not what it is called. It is not
the "popular Press." It is not the public Press. It is not an organ of
public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all
sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great
nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and
enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and
honest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on the
ordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and a
monopoly. He receives all his political information and all his political
marching orders from what is by this time a sort of half-conscious secret
society, with very few members, but a great deal of money.

This enormous and essential fact is concealed for us by a number of
legends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that the
Press is flashy or trivial _because_ it is popular. In other words, an
attempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism as the
natural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish. The
democracy has no more to do with the papers than it has with the peerages.
The millionaire newspapers are vulgar and silly because the millionaires
are vulgar and silly. It is the proprietor, not the editor, not the
sub-editor, least of all the reader, who is pleased with this monotonous
prairie of printed words. The same slander on democracy can be noticed in
the case of advertisements. There is many a tender old Tory imagination
that vaguely feels that our streets would be hung with escutcheons and
tapestries, if only the profane vulgar had not hung them with
advertisements of Sapolio and Sunlight Soap. But advertisement does not
come from the unlettered many. It comes from the refined few. Did you
ever hear of a mob rising to placard the Town Hall with proclamations in
favour of Sapolio? Did you ever see a poor, ragged man laboriously
drawing and painting a picture on the wall in favour of Sunlight
Soap--simply as a labour of love? It is nonsense; those who hang our
public walls with ugly pictures are the same select few who hang their
private walls with exquisite and expensive pictures. The vulgarisation of
modern life has come from the governing class; from the highly educated
class. Most of the people who have posters in Camberwell have peerages at
Westminster. But the strongest instance of all is that which has been
unbroken until lately, and still largely prevails; the ghastly monotony of
the Press.

Then comes that other legend; the notion that men like the masters of the
Newspaper Trusts "give the people what they want." Why, it is the whole
aim and definition of a Trust that it gives the people what it chooses.
In the old days, when Parliaments were free in England, it was discovered
that one courtier was allowed to sell all the silk, and another to sell
all the sweet wine. A member of the House of Commons humorously asked who
was allowed to sell all the bread. I really tremble to think what that
sarcastic legislator would have said if he had been put off with the
modern nonsense about "gauging the public taste." Suppose the first
courtier had said that, by his shrewd, self-made sense, he had detected
that people had a vague desire for silk; and even a deep, dim human desire
to pay so much a yard for itl Suppose the second courtier said that he had,
by his own rugged intellect, discovered a general desire for wine: and
that people bought his wine at his price--when they could buy no other!
Suppose a third courtier had jumped up and said that people always bought
his bread when they could get none anywhere else.

Well, that is a perfect parallel. "After bread, the need of the people is
knowledge," said Danton. Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes through
to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread might come
through to a besieged city. Men must wish to know what is happening,
whoever has the privilege of telling them. They must listen to the
messenger, even if he is a liar. They must listen to the liar, even if he
is a bore. The official journalist for some time past has been both a
bore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to neglect his sheets
of news altogether. Lately the capitalist Press really has begun to be
neglected; because its bad journalism was overpowering and appalling.
Lately we have really begun to find out that capitalism cannot write, just
as it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or make a joke, or do any other
stricken human thing. But this discovery has been quite recent. The
capitalist newspaper was never actually unread until it was actually
unreadable.

If you retain the servile superstition that the Press, as run by the
capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water in
a desert is popular), consider the case of the solemn articles in praise
of the men who own newspapers--men of the type of Cadbury or Harmsworth,
men of the type of the small club of millionaires. Did you ever hear a
plain man in a tramcar or train talking about Carnegie's bright genial
smile or Rothschild's simple, easy hospitality? Did you ever hear an
ordinary citizen ask what was the opinion of Sir Joseph Lyons about the
hopes and fears of this, our native land? These few small-minded men
publish, papers to praise themselves. You could no more get an
intelligent poor man to praise a millionaire's soul, except for hire, than
you could get him to sell a millionaire's soap, except for hire. And I
repeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of the new
plutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic jealousy.
The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the appearance of
good journalism.

There is no average member of the public who would not prefer to have
Lloyd George discussed as what he is, a Welshman of genius and ideals,
strangely fascinated by bad fashion and bad finance, rather than discussed
as what neither he nor anyone else ever was, a perfect democrat or an
utterly detestable demagogue. There is no reader of a daily paper who
would not feel more concern--and more respect--for Sir Rufus Isaacs as a
man who has been a stockbroker, than as a man who happens to be
Attorney-General. There is no man in the street who is not more
interested in Lloyd George's investments than in his Land Campaign. There
is no man in the street who could not understand (and like) Rufus Isaacs
as a Jew better than he can possibly like him as a British statesman.
There is no sane journalist alive who would say that the official account
of Marconis would be better "copy" than the true account that such papers
as this have dragged out. We have committed one crime against the
newspaper proprietor which he will never forgive. We point out that his
papers are dull. And we propose to print some papers that are
interesting.