Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/387

 THE PRESS AND PUBLIC OPINION 373

and behaves. Knowledge is a liberalizing and civilizing agency. Prejudice, international hatreds and dislikes, are chiefly the result of ignorance, provincialism, and narrowness. What travel and actual intercourse do for the few, newspapers do for the many. To be interested in the politics, economics, and miscellaneous affairs of other peoples, to follow their struggles and study their intellectual and moral traits as manifested in daily conduct, is to become gradually and unconsciously cosmopolitan, broad, human. If one touch of nature makes the world kin, what must be the effect of the daily interchange of sentiments made possible by the press, the sharing by the nations in one another's joys and sorrows ! Thanks to the press, the civilized world has become "small" and organic. Nations feel themselves under a moral coercion, and a "decent regard for the opinion of mankind" prevents much wrong and injustice, and induces anxious reflec- tion and deliberation, even in apparently irresponsible rulers. The light that beats upon thrones, cabinets, parliaments, and other institutions is fierce, indeed, in these days of publicity. The Dreyfus trial, without a parallel in history so far as the keen concern of civilization in the proceedings and outcome was concerned, was a striking illustration of the effect of the modern newspaper with its marvelous facilities for gathering and speedily speading the news.

From the standpoint of "news" — that is, publicity and knowledge of what is going on — the sociologist would be justi- fied in hailing the modern press as a wonderful moral factor, were it not for that curse and pestilential nuisance, the "yellow" variety of newspapers. It would be a serious error to suppose that there is a wide gulf, or at least a bold, black line, between the sensational and irresponsible paper and the careful and trust- worthy one. The honest, fair, and truthful papers in the United States, for example, could easily be counted on the fingers of one man's hands. The question of " yellowness " is one of degree. Some papers are utterly reckless of principle, honor, and reason ; others confine their yellow tendencies to particular spheres and subjects. Some lie constantly; others lie only at election time. Some manufacture news ; others distort and misrepresent, and are