A JOURNALIST'S COMPLAINTS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1509, 3 August 1912, Page 9

A JOURNALIST'S COMPLAINTS.

'Tt is a poor gathering of intellectuals in these days in which somebody docs not cast a stone at the daily press." writes Barnard K. Sandwell, in the "University Magazine" (Toronto). "It is 11 wellknown disposition of individual rreat n:ou to blame the foolishness of their utterances upon, tho reporter; but a far more serious matter is tho collective disposition of all tho great men of the' country to blame tho country's foolishness on its newspapers.

"It i.s us necessary for a university processor to deplore the condition of the press as it is for a minister of religion to daplora the condition of the stage; not to do so is the mark of a vulgarian and a person of no culture. The feelings of a uewspap:* man in a University Club may be compared with those of 'an actor at a meeting of the Ministerial Association; ho scon learns that while he may personally be the most delightful of fellows, (Tie. institution which he represents is not to be condoned for a moment.

, "Some of my fellow-students who left college at the same time went into the business of making steel "irdci= much .-s I did into that of making newspapers; some went into the business of making cheese; snmo selling mining slocks;.some making mergers. Of all these categories not one involved the slightest special obligation towards the community as ciuunared with any ether. The cheese mini, the neivpaper man. the steel girder mini, the merger man, all went into their var-

ions -brandies of business with the solo purpose of making money in a congenial manner and under tho solo obligation of conducting themselves honestlv therein as befits a law-abiding Canadian".

Certain others of my fellow-students went into moro carefully hedged vocations, into the professions, properlv so called, lu accepting these privileges "they naturally undertook certain obligations. "Tho doctors undertook to hold themselves ready to save my life or that of any other human being whenever necessary, even if it rei|iiired them to get up out of bed at three in the morning, and to refrain from charging me move for doing so than my life was worth. The ministers accepted the heavy responsibilities of ordination, promised to believo and teach a long list of doctrines which wero a severo strain upon their intelligence, and undertook to live a life of such aggressive godliness; righteousness, and sobriety as should convince all beholders that they were sustained by a more than human power. The pharmacists swore not to take advantage of the fact that I and many others are quite incapable of telling tho difference between hydrocyanic acid and cod liver oil.

"Even the school teachers, whoso monopolistic privileges seem to have very little financial value/ bound themselves to devote a certain number of years to tho practice of the most depressing calling in tho world, and to refrain from violent personal assault upon young Canadians under provocations which would justify an. ordinary man in committing- murder. Tho cheese man and I promised none of these things.

"The vast majority of the people of Canada appear firmly convinced that I and my newspaper colleagues have taken upon ourselves a sacred obligation to uplift, educate, refine, and improve our readers and the nation at large. Obedienco to law is the least of our duties. Everybody has a missionary task to perform.

"If tho moral qualities of tho daily press are largely reducible to dollars and cants, tho intellectual qualities are governed by exactly the same considerations. Tho refined and cultured persons who como to me and inquire why the newspaper publishers of Canada do not give them refined and cultured newspapers, with no exaggerated statements, anil no screaming headlines, and no divorce items, and no nnu-dars, aud nothing except that which interests tho intellectual man, overlook tho fatal fact that it is not they who pay for the newspapers, but the advertisers who pay to have the newspapers given lo them, and who want'to liavo them given, not merely lo refined and'cultured persons, but to all persons with money (o spend. Whenever the refined and cultured persons of .Canada become willing to pay for the cost of the kind of newspaper which they desire, cf course with tho assistance of that limited class of advertisers to whom 6uch a circulation would appeal, they will get what they want.

"Wo have outgrown tho idea of any special sanctity in speech or writing; is it not about lime that w-> outgrew (he idea of any special obligation attaching to the printing of newspapers? It involves less timo and labiur !o-d:iy to print a hundred tluniNiiid copies of a paragraph in a newspaper than it would have taken to write one copy of tho same paragraph in the laborbxs hindwriling of •our.'cnturies ago; there are more such paragraphs printed, a hunlrcd thousand impre.-sii-ns deep, to-da; every twenty-four hours than were written one ccpy deep, when clerk and clergy wero synonymous. "Tho nevip-vper paragraph has, then, neither rarity nor costliness to sanctify it. It is li"rutty read and as lightly tossed aside. of those who read it' do not wont to'believe: thm* ask only to bo interested, amused. They read 'their daily paper to-day for the same reason which two generations ago would have led them to sit in the ale-house or the kitchen of an ovenins and exchange viva voce gossip on the pedple of their acquaintance and the events of their time.

.. "The newspaper of to-day is the p-cssip of yesterday, much busied with things that do not matter and wholly recklo's and uncomiiTehendiiig rf thirds rh».t do. It is printed on paper that will perish in .1 few years, in a language that will he incomnrehcnsible in a few decades. It is paid for. by the proprietors of naient pills and departmental stores.- What is the use of asking it to act as if 'it wcto a religion.-" ,