ANONYMOUS JOURNALISM.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10830, 24 November 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

ANONYMOUS JOURNALISM.

11l noticing a speech made by Dr Trail, the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, when receiving the Institute of Journalists, the London Spectator devotes an article to Journalism and its Ideals, m the course of which it says : Anonymous journalism is sometimes censured as though its chief object were to shield the journalist from the consequences of his attacks upon other people. As yet, however, no English newspaper, so far as we know, has made it a rule that its political articles should be signed. It would be a bad day for Englivh journalism if such a change were ever made. For one thing, the corporate character of a newspaper would disappear. The link which the editor's personality constitutes would no longer keep the staff together, and each man would be free .to say that which was right m his own eyes. Dr Trail spoke of journalists as the successors of the great pamphleteers of the past. As things are, they are their successors, with a difference. If every article were signed they would be, not successors, but replicas — replica:* which, alike from their number and from their inferiority, would havo few of the merits and nothing of the influence of the originals. Between the opinion of a newspaper and the opinion of the idividual writer there is something of the difference that there is between t,he opinion of an individual Minister and the opinion of the Cabinet of which he forms part. The latter is more or less of a compromise. It is the result of a inquiry whether there exists a formula upon which 20 men can be brought to agree. The opinion of the individual writer may be more interesting, but it will not command the assent of so many readers. Indeed, the influence of journals as journals would be at an end, and would be replaced by the influence of this or that journalist. Those who hold that newspaper influence is commonly bad would welcome this change. Men often fall victims to an impersonal argument when they would resist the very same reasoning if it were addressed to them by a man with whose personality and antecedents they -are familiar. Nor would the signing of newspaper articles — we are not speaking of occassional articles m reviews and magazines, where the interest often depends less on what is said than on the fact that it is. said by a particular person — have the effect of stimulating the sense of responsibility which is often attributed to it. In many cases, indeed, it would have a directly contrary effect. The absence of anonymity would remove the restraining influence which the sense that he is committing others than himself exercises on the writer. Now a leading article is m the nature of a common utterance, and it is the editor, not the writer, who is committed by it. If it were signed, the. writer would feel that what he said concerned nobody but himself, and to some temperaments this would constitute a great temptation to attract readers by startling them. That is an appetite which grows by indulgence, until at last the writer's object seems to be to say something, as unlike as possible from what previous articles have led the reader to expect from them. Anonymity is an absolute check on eccentricity of this kind. It would make the writer's individual eccentricities seem common to a whole staff, and so defeat his object m uttering them. !