AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143673, 18 December 1911, Page 8

AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.

AN INTERESTING CRITICISM. The recent death of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor ol they New York Journal and New York Wqnd, were the first so-called “yellow' 1 journals, has drawn attention to the general type of the American newspaper, and .a special article in the London '1 lines gives some interesting iulormanon on the subject. The winter, alter referring to the local diameter of many of the papers, goes on to ask the question ; WHAT CONSTITUTES NEWS ? Recently, when in the United States, I took tiie current issue of what is generally considered one of the better and more conservative of the New York newspapers, and analysed the matter which it presented on its front page, where the most important news day is supposed to he iound. That matter included the stories of: How a trained nnrso was accused of divers petty thefts from houses where she had been engaged ; How “a number" of sailors on a battleship were said to have been ill (no one died,) from eating turkey out of cold storage; How a little boy, 11 years old. was accused by the police of setting fire to buildings for fun; How, a crowd of a hundred people chased a dog supposed to be mad until it was shot , by a policeman ; How two hoys were capsized in a small boat and were “nearly exhausted” when they were rescued by boats from shore: blow a clerk in a broker’s office had obtained a divorce in Nevada a.nd how his wife said she would be happier without him ; How two couples on Long Island, being divorced, remarried, each man taking the other’s wife ; How a man in Chicago, having spout a night in gaol for wile-beating, said it was the first quiet night he had had since he was married ; How, in San Francisco, two dead Boston terriers were given a funeral which was attended by 100 other dogs, valued at, IGJ.OOO dollars; How, in New Jersey, two workmen poured kerosene oil on another while he was asleep and sot fire to him as a joke, burning him badiy. There was about an equal number of other items of a like character (fires, automobile accidents, shootings, etc.), which, however, were redeemed from the same triviality because they recorded the loss of human lives. None of those was a mere condensed nows item; hut each was written to make an article or “story,” of from 3in. io a quarter of a column in length, and none hut had the dignity of throe lines of conspicuous heading to call attention to it. The rest of the page was occupied with—thrust into the middle oi this mess—the real news of the day, such matters ns the assassination of M. Stolypin, the eruption of Etna, and a report of the conference of Hie Governors of the States of the Union. It is difficult to believe that this lack of perspective, the daily presentment of the most trivial, ami often most privately personal, matters, as if they wore part of the chief news of the world, can contribute to earnestness of purpose in the people or help them to take a wholesome view of the true value of things. A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE. If wo compare three issues of this same journal with corresponding issues of the Times, we find an almost equal amount (an average of about 73 columns daily) of reading matter, and a nearly identical number of (about •100) separate articles or news items; and we may assume this to he approximately the. maximum which human ability and the host mechanical appliances of the day make commercially practicable. The American paper contained an average of 39 items or “stories" a day dealing with crimes and acts of violence in the United States, and of Pi more treating of matrimonial infelicities, elopements, and domestic mishaps which would not in England be considered legitimate j matter for newspaper notoriety. The majority wore given a conspicuousr.es;, which implied that they were considered matters of the first importance. Against these half a hundred purely sensational and mostly sordid tales, there was an average of 11 items a day, under foreign date-lines, dealing with the news of the world outside the nited Stales, about one-half of which are from Canada. In the Times there was an average of six items a day dealing with crimes and acts of violence in the British Isles, and of -13 treating of nows outside this Empire, telegrams from Canada, India, Australasia, etc., not being included. It is true that an American newspaper might be expected to report more crimes than an English one, because there is so much more crime to report. Tho murders in the United .Stales last year bore, in comparison with those in the British Isles, a ratio of 116 to six. But it cannot, surely, bo cither national prejudice or personal obliquity of vision which makes one find it difficult to believe that a public preos with any serious sense of its responsibilities could, for tho purposes of the information of the people, consider this mass of squalid trivial personalities five times as important as the news of the whole of tile rest of the world. THE LOSS OF .MORAL INFLUENCE. A comparison of the press of London with that of an .American city is not, of course, altogether fair; not only because, as we have feeu, tho newspapers of no American city are national, as the great dailies of Loudon are national, but also because they do not stand for the same things in the community. Most ixmdou dailies deliberately' address themselves to the educated and thinking classes of the country, whereas the largo American which 'makes them the more honourable) addresses itself to an imaginary typical specimen of the “plain people.” It scrupulously avoids talking a language which demands any measure of polite education tor its comprehension, and the tastes to which it appeals arc what it supposes to be the. tastes of the greater number of the _ democratic mass. Tlie huge circulations of Mr, Pulitzer’s World and other papers seem to show what in their guess at these tastes they do not go far amiss. But no one is better aware than tho editors of some, at least, of tho_ groat dailies that they have won their circulations at the cost of ceasing to bo a moral of guiding force in the community. The public no longer expects a paper to have intellectual personality or to stand in tho relation of a mentor to its readers. The. editorial function has become overlaid by the reportorial, and the reporter has grown to be a highly specialised expert in imaginative short story writing. The arrangement or “make-up” is like appeals to a cheap clientele by placing not its best but its gaudiest wares in tho front. So far as intrinsic values

aro concerned, tho ingredients which go to make up the Iron; page of an paper arc about as fortuitous as pudding-stone. But the question of responsibility remains. It is impossible not to -render how far tho extraordinary interest in crime which the press encourages (and which is the keynote of the “Yellow” journal) is answerable for the popularity of crime itself, and how far its lack of discrimination in values is causing it ho present mental confusion of the people and their aimless discontent. It is also impossible not to wonder whether it might not be, better for the newspapers themselves as well as for the nation, if tho country had a press to which it looked for leadership and of which it could speak in tones of more sincere respect. For it should bo said that nothing that can bo read into what is here written is ono-tenth as uncomplimentary as what tho average American citizen says of his newspapers every day.