BARWELL'S VIEW OF NEWSPAPERS

New Zealand Tablet, 22 January 1920, Page 19

BARWELL'S VIEW OF NEWSPAPERS

' -—. —■ ♦ , . "';• V (By Very Rev. DEAN Burke.) ..:: -;h: :: i - rVtK . The influence on the common run of minds of anything in print amounts to a superstition. See how many take in as truth and fact everything they see in pamphlets and papers. Even the sneaking letters of anonymous writers have influence with' some people. These irresponsible effusions often make candidates for parliament shake in their shoes. Even the lying advertisements of known paid political agents go not without. gathering some fruit amongst the credulous. Seeing this, one thinks of Carlyle's millions— fools. All the contradictory and outrageous rubbish published during war-time in leading articles and news-columns, should have aroused the doubting capacity among the general public. But, no; Carlyle's fools still swear by their Times or Neivs, their Toiler or Nation. They still get much of their thought on politics and religion as well as on sports and markets from their editor and his staffof whose qualifications as teachers they are generally ignorant. The saying of Tacitus holds true here, Omne ignotum pro magnifico. There lies the cause of the mischief. Acquaintance between reader and his authority would be to the reader enlightening. It would arouse the sleeping critical faculty. Take the experiences of Dermod Flynn, country bumpkin fronVyDonegal, navvy in Scotland, and sometime child of The Dead End. He read, at intervals in his work; a good deal of cheap literature, developed a taste for writing, and sent some stories of navvy life to the editor of the Dawn. The stories pleased the editor; so he invited Dermod to a place on his staff in Fleet Street, London — the centre of British journalism. Arrived from Scotland in London Dermod Flynn presented himself to the editor. He was asked a few vague, careless questions as to his previous life and was, at once, assigned his first taskto write a vivid account of a fire which had broken out at Holborn. Outside the editor's room he met a clean-shaven, alert young man and rapid talk began directly: "Are you Flynn? Yes? My name is Barwell. I am a journalist like yourself. What the devil caused you to come here? You might have stayed where you were. You'll find that a navvies' office is much better than a newspaper office. Have you bad lunch? No? Come along then. "We'll go nut together and feed." "When tho pair had eaten, Flynn said: "The news editor has asked me to write an account of a fire in Holborn. Do you know where Holborn is?" "You do not require to go near the place. The whole account is in the evening paper. You can write your story now and get your facts from this rag. Have you a pencil and a note-book? No! If you are going to take up journalism they are the initial and principal requirements. Beyond some tact and plenty of cheek you require nothing else. A conscience and love of truth are great drawbacks ! Now begin. The opening -sentence must be crisp and startling, and never end your sentences with prepositions. You know nothing about the fire, you say! •Get your facts from the rag and write your story in your own way. You'll find this good training when you have to weave out lies of your own. Meanwhile I have three or four novels to review. I have not read them. It is bad policy to read a book before you review it. This* volume is written by a personal friend of the editor. I must review it favorably. That book is by a strong Liberal. Our paper is Tory. I must slate it." "But our own opinion?" "What the devil do I need with an opinion of my own ? We are now speaking in a confidential, not in a journalistic sense. Do you not think that it is a heavenly privilege to be allowed to write lies for a nation of fools?" "Do you really think that men are acting in a straightforward manner by writing unfair and untruthful articles for. the public?" Flynn asked. "The public is a crowd of asses and you must interest it. You are paid to interest it with plausible lies or unsavory truths. An unsavory truth is always palatable to those whom it does not harm. Our readers gloat over scandal, revel in scandal, and pay us for writing it. Learn what the public requires and give it that. Think one thing in the morning and another at night. Preach what is suitable to the mob. Study the principle of the paper for which you write. That's how you have to do it, Flynn. A paper's principle is a very subtle thing and - it must be studied. The principle of a daily paper is elusive, old man, damned elusive. Every measure passed in parliament affects it. It oscillates to the breezes of public opinion; it is very intangible. . . -.- "Some day you'll learn of the consistences of the Dawn and Fleet Street, Flynn. Here a Jew defends Christianity and an American advocates Protection; a poet

is compiler of statistics, the penny-liner a defender of the idle rich and the reporter with anarchistic ideas a defender of social law ' and order! Hero charlatans, false as they are clever, play games in which the pawns are often Religion and Atheism and make, as suits their purpose, money and material advantage out of them. Fleet •Street, with its jostling newspaper rookeries, is the home of chicanery, of fraud,-of versatile vices and unnumbered sins. It is an outcome of the civilisation which it rules, «. framer of the laws which it afterwards destroys or projects, at caprice. Without conscience or soul, it dominates the world. "Take the Dawn for example. The editor is a Frenchman, the leader-writer is a German, the American special 'correspondent is an Irishman who crossed the Channel from Ireland to England and who has never ventured on the sea since. The Dawn advocates Tariff Reform, vet 'most of the reporters are Socialists. The German leader>vriter points out the danger of a German menace daily. What influences one of the Kaiser's subjects to sit down sand, for the special benefit of the English nation, write ; a thrilling warning against the German manace? Salary or honest principlewhich? The Dawn knows the opinions of Germany before Germany has formed an opinion. It gives particulars of the situation in the Par East before the situation has evolved from its earliest stages. Our reviewers seldom read the books which they review and the quack suffers from the ills which, in our columns, he professes to cure. A newspaper, my dear fellow, is as untruthful as the epitaph on a rich man's tombstone." Flynn, who had not been brought up in the atmosphere of journalism and who had some inborn truthfulness and honesty in his composition, soon threw up his job in Fleet Street and went back to his old haunts in Glasgow. Barwell's speech if intelligently considered should move even country readers to throw away some of that all-devouring credulity with which they absorb the daily or weekly printed page. Superstitious reverence for words in printers' ink is almost as poor a thing as superstitious reverence for ancient Egypt's sacred cats.