Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1870-04-27
Newspapers In England.

Newspapers In England.
The Spectator of April 2, has an article
complaining bitterly of the dulness of its
daily contemporaries, 1t quotes a para
graph from an essay i'm monthly maga-
zine on the same subject, and adds its own
remarks:
We talk of the liberty of the press now
adays, but the liberty of the press is limited
to the privilege of abusing antagonists.
To those Immediately concerned, this
much-boasted liberty is sheer and absolute
servitude. The party journalist is at every
turn weighted with the traditions of the
past and the policy of the present, whom
belong to the soi-distdnt statesmen which
he represents in print. He will receive the
strictest directions from his editor TO take
his cue in all matters, great or small, from
the leader of the party, nay, that same
leader will copdescend to dispatch missives
from Grosvenor Gate to Fleet-street or
from Carlton-house Terrace to a certain
square adjacent to Ludgate Hill, convey
ing full intelligence as to the subject of
which the leader-writer is to treat and the
views on those subjects which it is held de-
sirable he should express. From the line
of action thus marked out for him, our
journalist viii not be permitted to stir one
inch and If in moment of impulsively
Independent originality he ventures to in
terpolate single bit of sentiment of his
own, that sentiment will be remorselessIy
eliminated by discreet editor, who, II he
has been acting up TO his duty, corrects the
article of his contributor, fresh from the
rumors of Hobbies, and newly primed with
all the gossip of clubs. So much for the
spontaneity of party Journalism. The
whole institution is about as free or natural
as the machinery of mandatory is free
or natural, and the party journalist works
neither more nor less mechanically than
the piston or the screw.o
Journalists have, in fact, become power
full, without becoming so individualized to
the world that they are compelled also to
be themselves. They have become power
full, too, in way which makes them feel
like ministers, and burdens them with all
those reticences which are the intellectual
curse of ministers who have to exercise
power through parliamentary forms, those
habits of producing not the true argument
but the popular argument which begin to
mark the House of Commons, and which
made, to take one example only, the debate
in the Lords on the Coercion bill so much
more readable, because so much more hon
est, than the debate in the Commons. Of
fetal information, too, has become indefi-
nitely more valuable. We frankly confess
we do not know why this is, why newspa-
pers have caused so much to depend on
themselves for the collection of facts; but
we believe that 1t is due partly to greater
interest in the proceedings of the Govern
ment as compared with the proceedings of
the public-Government having acquired
a real leadership-partly to the increased
power of journalism, which tempts the
leaders on both sides to insist on stricter
discipline, and partly to the accidents of
the hour, but the fact remains The pa
pers are as decorous as detailed and as dull
as the politicians. A leader beginning
with Broagbam's famous sentence, The
Queen has done it all" would be rejected
with horror, a hint that Cabinet is divid-
ed is regarded as treason, and as for an in
dividual or crotchetty" or popular view
of any given topic, say, for example, the
Press Restriction law, upon which there is
some fierce differences of opinion, it can
barely get itself uttered i'm an undertone of
querulousness. Indeas, popular and other
wise, get expressed in the weekly journals,
but in the daily papers, that is, in the real
press as popularity understood, they have
no more chance than they have in the
House of Commons. We lament as a dis
tinct, an increasing, and serious evil, the
want of birr" and "go' and force, of
individualism and intellectual eccentricity,
in the metropolitan press. 1t is not only
a bore to have everybody saying the same
things, it is an evil for the apparent
unanimity is not real and covers up and
intensifies popular dislikes which, so sup
pressed, burst out in the end like intellec-
tual nitro-glycerine.