Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/455

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On May 23, 1900, the State of New York issued a charter to a corporation known as the Associated Press. The new organization was virtually a continuance of the Western Associated Press which had had its headquarters at Chicago. This change was doubtless made because the Supreme Court of Illinois, after a suit had been brought against the Associated Press by The Chicago Interocean to secure the news service of the Association, had handed down the following decision:—

"The Associated Press from the time of its organization and establishment in business sold the news reports to various newspapers who became members, and the publication of that news became of vast importance to the public so that public interest is attached to the dissemination of that news. The manner in which that corporation has used its franchise has charged its business with a public interest. It has devoted its property to a public use, and has, in effect, granted to the public such an interest in its use that it must submit to be controlled by the public, for the common good, to the extent of the interest it has thus created in the public in its private property. The sole purpose for which news was gathered was that the same should be sold, and all newspaper publishers desiring to purchase such news for publication are entitled to purchase the same without discrimination against them. . . . The appellee corporation being engaged in a business upon which a public interest is engrafted, upon principles of justice it can make no distinction with respect to persons who wish to purchase information and news, for purposes of publication, which it was created to furnish. . . . The legal character of the corporation and its duties cannot be disregarded because of any stipulation incorporated in a contract that it should not be liable to discharge a public duty. Its obligation to serve the public is not one resting on contract, but grows out of the fact that it is in the discharge of a public duty, or a private duty which has been so conducted that a public interest has attached thereto."

The position taken by the Associated Press is that it has no monopoly of the news. Its general manager, Melville E. Stone, has explained the situation as follows:—

The output of the Associated Press is not the news; it is its own story of the news. There can be no monopoly in news. At the point of origin, Havana, the destruction of the Maine was known by every man, woman, and child. Any one could have written a story of it. The Associated Press men did. It was their own story. Who shall say