NEWSPAPER INFLUENCE—WAYS OF PERSUADING THE PUBLIC—SERVICE TO THE GOVERNMENT

The editor of experience appreciates that in attempting to influence the public he is addressing many men of many minds. An argument intended to convince a scholar or a well informed man would be lost on an ignorant man, while an appeal written down to the understanding of the ignorant man must provoke mirth from the wise. Nevertheless, all persons frequently are influenced by mere suggestion, especially when they have not studied the subject. Frequently they may reverse a judgment on a mere hint in a newspaper. Not all men have time, in these busy days, to think out the problems of the hour, have not the facilities at hand for research, haven’t been taught to think. Intelligent thinking is a result of education—the education that teaches to think. Mental improvement is the result of thought. Progress comes from mental application. What we call “experience” is the result of constant thought in one direction or toward a single purpose. Lincoln was fourfold the man in 1865 that he was in 1860. Any observer could see Woodrow Wilson leap forward in mental strength from the instant of his appearance in public life.

The editor literally thinks for his readers. He acquires a habit of thought not cultivated or sought or possessed by his readers. He is trained to a mental analysis of the causes of great events, to an expert understanding of their present importance, to a clear insight into their future influence. If he has studied, he knows the great influences that for centuries have governed human conduct.

In the big cities the editor knows the quality of mind he is addressing better than does the writer in smaller communities. In New York, for instance, every sheet has a different sort of clientele. Everybody knows which newspaper, by reason of its scholarly editorial articles, its criticisms, its reviews and non-sensational news appeals to the highest intelligence. And every one knows the ones that appeal to the non-thinking public.

But in smaller towns the newspaper goes to the wise and the unwise alike. The task of pleasing everybody requires study, and here editorial writing becomes an art, indeed. The scholar may sneer at the article that pleases the man of toil and both may despise the suggestion that convinces the man of medium intelligence.

The editor of scholarly instincts naturally wants to please the highest intelligence among his readers; but the readers who really think in a scholarly way are few. The great proportion of readers care little for so-called polite literature, neither do they care for profound instruction. They want the simpler sort of editorial comment and are better pleased with that which explains than with that which argues. They want their news adorned with breath-catching headlines in big type.

In the large cities many professional and business men read several daily newspapers, but their number is small compared with the millions who read one paper only. In smaller cities and in the villages and on the farms it is quite the exception when more than one daily newspaper enters the household. In very many instances this one sheet is all the reading matter the members of the household have. Their entire conception of public affairs is had from this publication. It is quite impossible to suppose that they are not influenced by it. They let the editor think for them and they accept his conclusions.

It has been argued, with much reason, that the newspaper is indispensable to a republican or representative form of government embracing vast territory, like our own. Even the founders of this nation did not anticipate that the government could extend its jurisdiction far beyond the Alleghenies, much less to the Pacific coast. The plea for states rights was founded on the belief that it must be impossible to bring so large an area as the original thirteen states under a single form of government. Without the telegraph, without railroads, in the early history of the American nation there was no way of keeping the mass of the people in close touch with the government, of supplying quick information on current events without which the people are incapable of forming correct opinions. To-day, the newspapers, with their simultaneous publication all over the continent, their fast printing and quick delivery, keep all the people instantly informed. They are able immediately to reflect public opinion, thus making themselves indispensable to the government. Vast though our distances may be, we have the healthiest kind of public spirit and response. The sentiment of the nation is at the government’s disposal in a jiffy.

This was strikingly illustrated after one of President Wilson’s intimations to Germany that unconditional surrender must be a condition of armistice. The same edition of a New York newspaper that contained the President’s declaration also contained comments on that declaration made by more than two hundred different publications from Maine to California, and every one of them insisted on “unconditional surrender.” The President knew instantly that the people were with him.

For very many years it has been the practice of governments (and yet more persistently the practice of political leaders) to put out “feelers” through the press. A new policy, a questionable nomination, a new plan of taxation, may be contemplated. The government seeks to “feel the pulse of the people” on its desirability. Hints are given to the correspondents that the policy or the plan has been suggested and is under consideration and the correspondents pass it along to their newspapers, well fortified with those stale old prefixes, “it is said that” or “rumor has it that” or “a person high in authority who does not wish to be quoted hints that”—and so on—giving an outline of the proposed action.

This is followed by another “feeler” passing out a little more information saddled on some other mysterious persons. On any important question the public flashes a quick response. The proposal in Washington, for instance, to double the tax on theater tickets and admissions to places of amusement drew a howl of disapproval that defeated the plan. The people didn’t want their pleasures taxed additionally.

The government or the political party that deliberately defies public sentiment as expressed in the newspapers is put out of business usually at the following election.

Throughout the World War the newspapers were of the utmost usefulness to the government. They stood between the government and the people. They made and reflected public sentiment as never before. Government announcements were read in every city in the nation and in most of the villages within six hours of their release. The government spoke to the people in almost instantaneous speech.

The newspapers urged and sustained and stimulated the bond sales, the thrift stamp drives, the activities of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and like organizations, the merciful ministrations of the Red Cross, the vast collection of money for the relief of stricken peoples, the food campaigns, the conservation of heat and light and a host of other material things. It would require pages of print to tell the half of it. It would require hours of constant thought to appreciate it. Recall, if you will, what your own favorite paper did, and then be assured that thousands of other daily sheets did the same thing!

Newspaper influence had perhaps its finest recognition in the various propaganda of the war. All governments used the press lavishly with intent to guide, to conceal, to accomplish. They “felt the pulse of the people” constantly and subtly. Proposed policies were tested out. Often they were suggested to direct attention from the real policy or to take the sting from it.

The French press under the immediate inspiration and control of the government held the people in compact unity. It stimulated the morale and intensified the purpose of the soldiers, for it was possible to strew the trenches with newspapers within two hours after they were printed. This was of inestimable patriotic service. Not any other government used the newspapers with such skill or with greater beneficial results.

Newspaper influence was sought in the process of the censorship. The object of censorship was not alone to prevent information from reaching the enemy but also to influence public opinion. All warring nations seek the good opinion of the neutrals—seek to have neutral nations convinced of the ultimate success of their armies—hence the impulse to suppress the news of defeat and to exalt victory. Early in the war this was the pronounced attitude of Germany and Great Britain toward America, much to the annoyance of the American newspapers.

Germany’s efforts to influence the American public through our newspapers were so constant, so vociferous, so transparent, that everybody recognized the purpose. Yet she continued to spend great sums of money on propaganda to the very end of the war. Germany worked the press of every country. It was a part of her war plan just as much as was the making of bullets or asphyxiating gas. It was thought out and arranged for and practiced before the war broke. It was depended on to create sympathy and to establish justification; and it was exceedingly efficacious in the early periods and influenced greatly to postpone our entrance into the conflict.

Despite the censorship the war was very well reported by American newspapers. Our journals were read with an interest approaching to anxiety, and the public came to believe that the news was truthfully presented. News reading was raised to a high plane of importance. The war gave the public greater confidence in the newspapers.

In olden times, despotic times, in Greece and Italy let us say, before newspapers existed, the people gathered in public places to listen to government proclamations and whatever news the rulers were pleased to give out. The information was proclaimed by heralds or was placarded on market walls. The usual policy was to keep the people in ignorance of what was going on. No public opinion existed, for the public had no information on which to form conclusions. Many governments prevented gatherings of the people knowing the power of the people to create sentiment and rebellion. Not for weeks or months did remote regions get important news that the government wished to conceal. No means of quick communication existed. The concealment of news and the suppression of public sentiment helped to strengthen despotic government. The rulers might circulate false news as well as the truth, and frequently did so. Our present-day censorship is an hereditary relic of this ancient-day concealment.

The newspaper’s greatest influence is not in persuading persons who have learned to think for themselves. It is exercised on that great mass of our population that has no other source of information than the newspapers. In thousands of families not more than two or three books are purchased in an entire year, and these are likely to be books of fiction. Yet few families are without a daily newspaper. Usually one paper only is taken, and how could it happen otherwise than that the household should come to the editor’s way of thinking when no other thought than his comes to their attention? This condition applies to people in moderate circumstances, employees, helpers, those who live by physical toil or who do the simplest kind of clerical work. These people are easily influenced because they have not been trained to think or analyze for themselves. They depend on the newspaper for information, explanation, suggestion. They have little inclination or time to study with diligence the great questions of the day and have few or no facilities for doing so in any event. They are not interested in profound argument but they accept conclusions readily. If the editor be wise he will seek to know what proportion of his readers are of this type.

The average newspaper reader does not think overmuch of what he is reading but he is highly receptive. His conclusion is likely to be affirmative. It is his nature to believe rather than to distrust. He is easily led by artful groupings of fact, rather more easily led thus than by argument requiring much thought. There is not time in these strenuous days for the old-fashioned kind of thinking. Quick conclusions are the vogue and they are not the result of profound thought. Rather are they the result of hasty thought. This is attested by the rush from one party to another by the so-called independent voter, or the sudden dethronement of a public idol, or the restoration of a discarded hero to public popularity.

These quick changes in public sentiment have enlivened the history of all times. The poet Byron, in the beginning of his literary career, was praised by men and petted by women until the entire British nation was chanting adorations. Then, with the suddenness of a whirlwind, it turned against him and with furious persecution drove him into exile. The American hero of Manila Bay was escorted up Broadway by shouting thousands of admirers. Within a year he was no longer a hero. We resisted woman suffrage for scores of years and suddenly accepted it. This nation drank rum from its earliest beginnings and then with comparative suddenness changed the practice of centuries by declaring for prohibition.

The newspaper’s unconscious influence over the casual reader must be recognized. It is an instructive influence, usually, of wide scope, covering a multitude of topics that do not come to the reader’s attention in any other way than through the newspapers. Information does not get into the magazines or books until weeks or months after the event but the newspapers print it on the instant. The casual newspaper reader, for instance, reads that the new Roentgen ray has been discovered, by means of which the interior of an ordinarily opaque substance may be disclosed in photograph. He reads enough to establish that fact, but as soon as the description begins to become technical the casual reader abandons the article. Nevertheless he has absorbed the fact and a crude notion of the discovery and has added just so much to his fund of information. He may study it out if he chooses.

Again, there is no other quick source of information on new developments in politics, in finance, in the fluctuations of the commercial market prices.

Almost all of us feel that we must know about the artists, the singers, the actors, and we love to talk about them, yet what we say we almost surely have read in some newspaper. You get an intelligent idea at your breakfast table of the new opera that did not end until midnight, of the new play produced on the night preceding, of the speeches and the spirit of the banquet that did not end until after you were in sleep, of the conflagration that destroyed some well-known building during the night, of the railroad accident that destroyed scores of lives. And these are the things that you talk about during the day. They unconsciously influence your thoughts and your actions even when read casually.

The busy man is rather easily led along or into the editor’s way of thinking especially when the topic is new to him. He is not a trained or analytical thinker at best, hasn’t time to reflect much on the subject, cannot invent a new line of thought in opposition to the editor’s because of unfamiliarity with the subject, has no quick way of getting additional information. Maybe he instinctively balks at the editorial conclusion, but probably the editor is right, he reasons, and he passes to something more interesting.

The next article may be a continuation of comment on a subject written about two days before. It becomes a bit more familiar. He half recognizes the argument. He half accepts it now as his own, has “thought of that before,” so he approves. Reiteration has influenced him; a third presentation clinches him. Reiteration is a most subtle means of influencing public opinion. The man who reads the same thought a few times in different diction comes to accept it as his own thought. It is an unconscious influence.

It is little consolation to the editor that his articles are hastily read; so much the more reason, on the contrary, for making them striking and for making their meaning the more easily understood.

People like to see their own beliefs reflected in their newspaper; regard the editorial utterance as a confirmation of it; welcome a new argument in its favor; like to read it to a neighbor; come to look on the sheet as a personal champion.

All newspapers have great influence one way or another. They reach the people to an extent not reached by any other influence, for everybody of any account reads them. Consider for a moment. Rarely does a clergyman find himself addressing a congregation of more than five hundred persons; rarely, indeed, does the public lecturer speak to a thousand persons; and seldom, in the heat of a campaign, does the political orator find five thousand persons within the reach of his voice. Yet a little editorial paragraph, placed conspicuously on the editorial page of the New York Times, will be read by more than six hundred thousand persons. A million and a half newspapers are printed in New York city every morning, and nearly two millions every afternoon, not counting those printed in other languages than the English language of which there are nearly a million more. About the same proportion of newspapers to population prevails throughout the chief cities of the United States.

“I never read the editorials” we all have heard many a newspaper reader say. “I simply scan the editorials,” we hear others remark. Almost all editorial articles are hastily read, and so is the entire sheet for that matter. You have only to watch the process to be convinced. The busy man opens his newspaper to the editorial page as he would open a book, holds it open and high, one page grasped by the left hand and the other by the right. He scans the leading article, reads the first two or three sentences and if attention is not instantly attracted flashes his eye down to the beginning of the next paragraph, and so on. The greater the number of paragraphs in the article the more quick attention it gets. The sensational sheet editors know this and they make many paragraphs in every article.

The profound heavy articles with three or four paragraphs only to the column get scant attention except from readers especially interested in the topic. They are looked at for an instant only. In that instant the reader decides whether he is interested in the topic. Usually he is not. His eye skims along to the next article with same result. Then he may encounter something that he wants to know more about. But it is half a column long. “I’ll read it when I get time,” he says to himself, as his eye jumps over to the opposite page—a news page—and he begins to absorb the headlines. These he treats in the same hasty manner and in about three minutes he has finished the two pages and has turned over to the next two.

He reads all in the same way. He may pause over a particular article but usually the reading is of short duration. He has absorbed perhaps the spirit of the headings and maybe the few lines of introduction to the articles that have had his attention. He is ready with an opinion, but that opinion is the opinion of the man who wrote the caption or the introduction. The hasty reader has given the subject not the slightest original thought. Nevertheless he is influenced by it. It is recognized that almost everything we read has its direct or its unconscious influence.

Very many busy men confine their morning newspaper reading to the breakfast table, others “get through” their newspaper while on their way to business. Very little newspaper reading has their attention after reaching the office. Evening newspapers are read more thoroughly. There is more time after dinner. The comfortable chair, the shaded lamp, the family near to join in the comment—all help to make the reading more enjoyable. But even then the average reader does not read with intent attention.

It is incontestably true that the great mass of the people who read the newspapers in this hasty glancing fashion do not think deeply. This mental attitude has had the attention of observers for many years. Hawthorne speaks of “the wild babble of the town—indicating a low tone of feeling and shallow thought.” Macaulay said of Tillotson: “His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and sufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with that slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure.” Lafcadio Hearn speaks of the masses as people of uncultured taste to whom the higher zones of emotion are out of reach. Dr. Samuel Johnson remarked: “The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.” And one of the conspicuous British essayists commented: “It serves to show in what a slovenly way most people are content to think.”

Henry Ward Beecher ever was impressed with the influence of newspapers. He said:

Do you ever stop to think that millions have no literature, no school and almost no pulpit but the press? Not one man in ten reads books, but every one of us, except the very helpless poor, satiates himself every day with the newspaper. It is the parent, school, college, theatre, pulpit, example, counsellor, all in one. Every drop in our blood is colored by it.

Some one has said of newspaper influence: “Let me write the headlines and you may write the rest,” which was another way of saying: “Let me handle the news and you may write the editorial articles, the criticisms and the other things, and I will have the greater influence.” It always has been a debatable question.

Northcliffe, the conspicuous figure in journalism during the great war, has said:

It is true that an intelligently conducted newspaper can inform and guide public opinion but this is done more through publishing the news than by the dictum of the editorial. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” must be the underlying principle of journalism in a democracy.

In an appeal to editors to help spread the war spirit, a writer in the Columbia University War Papers wrote:

Editorials, repeated editorials, are both desirable and necessary. But to one reader who is influenced by a given editorial many hundreds are influenced day by day by the headlines of the paper and by the wording and form of presentation of the news. It is therefore to a considered and continuous policy of news presentation that we must look primarily for help.

Of newspaper influence Arthur Brisbane has said:

There never was a corrupt official who could hear without dread the growling of a hundred thousand human voices outside his door. There does not live a corrupt official, however hardened, who hears without alarm the opinions of a million men voiced through a newspaper which they trust.

Thackeray’s famous paragraph with reference to newspaper activities is often quoted as illustrating the power of the press through her writers. Pendennis and Warrington are passing a brilliantly lighted newspaper building. Reporters were coming out or were dashing up in cabs, and Warrington says:

Look at that, Pen. There she is—the great engine, she never sleeps. She has ambassadors in every quarter of the world—her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies and her envoys walk into statesmen’s cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent at this minute giving bribes in Madrid; and another inspecting the price of potatoes at Covent Garden. Look, here comes the foreign express galloping in. They will be able to give news to Downing street tomorrow; funds will rise or fall, fortunes be made or lost; Lord B will get up, and holding the paper in his hand and seeing the noble Marquis in his place, will make a great speech; and Mr. Doolan will be called away from his supper at the back kitchen; for he is sub-editor and sees the mail on the newspaper sheet before he goes to his own.

It may be said of present-day news column influence that never have the news columns been so free from personal feeling, so fair to foe. The public has never had greater confidence in them. Almost all editors are honest in desire to print both sides of an important controversy. They have come to know it is best policy. The speeches of rival partisans, their communications, their activities, have well-nigh as conspicuous places in the sheet as do the utterances of their own champions. This helps to aid unbiased conclusion.

Public questions never have had such elaborate publicity as in recent years, never have been so intelligently understood; and public sentiment has not hitherto been so active or so influential.

Indeed, the spirit of independent fairness has become so acute that not infrequently the small minority gets a prominence that it does not deserve, with resulting danger that its activities may be mistaken for genuine public sentiment.

This spirit of fairness does not exist of course in all publications, but almost all newspapers are honest in their news columns. The sheets that deliberately falsify become fewer every year. The influence of the news columns has increased vastly.

For individual power and influence Lord Northcliffe stood supreme among editors. His personal triumphs during the war were decisive and far reaching. He destroyed one British cabinet and built another. He forced the reorganization of departments. He compelled changes of military policy and action and he flabbergasted pretty nearly everybody who opposed. One of his distinguished opponents lamented that Northcliffe was the most powerful man in England’s affairs since Cromwell.

His editorial voice reached all kinds of people through the score or more of daily, weekly, and monthly publications owned or controlled by him all over the British empire. He owned the Times that for more than one hundred years had endeared itself to the British well-to-do and upper classes for its trustworthy news reports, its superior editorial comment and its fearless political criticism. He owned the Evening Mail that scattered a million copies daily among the common people. He talked every day to millions of people, who, while not thinking profoundly were willing to be led by intellectual excellence.

Northcliffe’s methods were of entrancing interest to those who observe and study newspaper influence. He admits that in the beginning he was fascinated by the American sensational press, by its ways of doing things, by the enormous circulations of some of our editions. Nothing of the sort existed in England twenty years ago and Northcliffe was the first to introduce American methods there. He visited us more than once to study our lurid journalism. He took several American newspaper men to help him in London. He was impressed with Mr. Pulitzer’s thought that our newspapers were too high toned, were written over the heads of the masses; that the masses were ignorant of what was going on because they could not understand the newspapers, and that a sheet written in simple language and sold for a cent must be popular. He would bring his sheet down to the comprehension of any man who could read.

Northcliffe added acute sensationalism to this general plan, and his daily newspapers in London, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and elsewhere jumped to big circulations. He did not much disturb the conservative news policy of the Times, but its editorial page became livid. Of him it was said:

Sensationalism is his gospel. Every day must have its thrill; every paragraph must be an electric shock. Politics are nothing; parties are nothing; principles are nothing; all that matters is that the great public shall be kept humming with excitement. He believes that power and political influence are in the hands of the multitude and that the newspaper having the ear of the multitude will control the tides of national thought.

Northcliffe’s unprecedented attacks on the Asquith government made the world gasp. Friends of the cabinet and some newspapers urged the suspension of his publications and his arrest for treason. His attacks continued. The government did not notice them. His unlicensed freedom of opinion was permitted. The idiocy of the Gallipoli campaign was exposed. The punishment of its authors was demanded. The inefficiency of the munitions department was made a public scandal and reorganization was compelled. Northcliffe insisted on a small war cabinet and on many other changes. Asquith’s indecision and exasperating deliberation, at the moment when quick thought and quick deeds were vital, filled Northcliffe with rage. The Asquith ministry fell and Northcliffe named the succession. The world has rarely seen such an exhibition of newspaper power.

The editor’s enemies endeavored to minimize the incident. They contended that Asquith’s fall was inevitable after the failure of the British advance on the Somme and the disaster in Roumania; that it was another instance of Northcliffe’s newspaper smartness in anticipating a coming event, urging its enactment and then taking credit for compelling it.

This, I am sorry to say, is a venerable editorial device for making newspaper reputation—learn what is contemplated by the government or some one else and then start in the newspaper a raging demand for it and when the end is accomplished take all the credit for it. Northcliffe was an adept at this sort of thing. Indeed his enemies accused him of giving the impression of forcing the government against its will. Be that as it may, he was easily the commanding figure in the journalism of the world during the war.