Chapter 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.

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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.