Lexington gazette. [volume] (Lexington, Va.) 1871-1962, 1906-01-03
THE AMERICAN PRESS
Its Great Influence Upon the
Public Mind

Public Mind
The Editor and Publisher, Q
weekly publication devoted to the
interests Of newspapers and news.
paper men, has q striking picture
as the frontlspiece to It's Christ.
mas number, says the Baltimore
News. 1t represents a powerful
searchlight throwing a beam of
intense white light upon q group
of covering and scurrying men.
The searchlight is marked as "Tht
Press" The men are evidently
the leading figures In the insur-
arce scandal. They hug their
money bags to their breasts as they
shrink and seek to flee from the
fate which exposure is bringing
upon them. They are indeed q
'wretched lot, unexpectedly and
effectually overtaken by wrathful
justice. And the picture is a
sadly true one. Transcendent
as are the merits of Mr.. Hughes
in the insurance investigation, the
press of the country and especially
the precs of New York, has been
the indispensable agent Of the crea-
! tion Of that tremendous aud far
scar ching effect which the insur-
rance revelations have brought
about.
But 1t is not of the insurance
affair that we desire to speak. Far
more general reflections are sug-
gested by this allegorical represen-
tation of the activity of the Amer
lean press. 1t is easy for cOmfOr-
table dilettantes to decrY the news
paper press. Certainly nothing is
easier than 70 point out its faults.
A want of proper proportion, mac
curacies due to the currently ac-
Ger ted necessity of printing the
news hct-haste after the event
neglect of whole great fields Of
high or deaver, are some of the
criticisms which are the most Ob-
Vious. Then there is criticism of
another kind-that of failure Of
newspapers to live up to their own
professed standards of fearlessness
and independence. That the
American newspa per is extremely
far from perfect, everybody will Rd.
nit. The strange thing is that
nybody but a fool should fix his
mind 60 exclusively on the imper
fections of newspapers as to forget
the great qualities, and the great
work they do in the face of enor-
nous difficulties.
Furthermore setting aside the
matter of editorial opinion, it must
be said for American newspapers
that they fulfill in remarkably
high degree their primary func-
tion-that of faithfully presenting
the news. The instances in which
LEWIS is suppressed or distorted are
few-very much fewer, we are con-
ident, than in any former
era of newspaper publishing. In
these days, when the carrying on
of a newspaper is a great financial
enterprise, this is most creditable
to American honesty or American
intelligence-some will say the
one, some the other; in reality it
is combination of the two. The
enormous growth in the financial
N agnltude of newspaper enter
prises has most fortunately been
accompanied by growth almost
or as remarkable in the idea of
newspaper independence. There
has been a loss OF individual dis
Effectiveness, such as characterized
the days of Horace Greeley and
George D. Prentice; but that indi-
vidualism was often accompanied
by personal and party entaRgle
ments and by astonishing partial
ity and unscrupulousness from
which the present-dsy newspaper
10 free.
The American newspaper is a
great big, pushing, struggling af-
fair. 1t IL a business enterprise
and at the same time a public in
stitution. 1t has to find it's way,
somehow or other, to combine
these two functions. Speaking
broadly and generally, IL succeeds
in doing so to an astonishing de-
gree. Having to make its way
in the rough-and-tumble of the
world-in other words, being COM
PEELED to make its revenues equal
exceed its expenses-it cannot live
In the serene, untrc uhled air which |
lie brsathed by the political think
or, the moral philosopher, the ar
tist or the litterateur. But this has
lite corporations. The neWspap-
er thst has to depesd upon the
public, and through it upon the
advertisers, for support haze its Wit
n quality which an endowed news
paper would lack.