Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 129.djvu/51

Rh somewhat less about the advantage to the community, or the nation, or the world, of determining its collective action after the freest discussion; but we are just beginning to see that it is still more vital that the individual shall be able to form his opinion upon the facts. If these facts are withheld from him or misrepresented to him, his opinion is as valueless as that of a judge who has heard incomplete or false evidence in a case. Though the individual may be at liberty to shout his ideas from the housetops, he is still a slave to illusion; and all the more completely a slave than if he were in bonds, because he fancies that he walks freely in the light.

There never was such an age of newspaper-reading as the present. Most of us read — or at least glance at — one, two, or more newspapers a day. They are the eyes through which largely we see the life of our time, and the news that they print is in great measure the raw material of our ideas. Nothing is more important than that through these eyes we shall see, not a distorted picture, but the reality. It is often contended in England, where the Northcliffe press wields far more power than any existing group of American newspapers, and it is occasionally contended in this country by those who take a gloomy view of affairs, that the public is at the mercy of the lords of the press, who feed it such garbled news as will best serve their own selfish purposes. Other critics, such as Professor James Melvin Lee, the author of an illuminating history of American journalism, assure us that the ethics of the newspaper profession are higher today than those of any other. It would seem worth while to consider the whole matter afresh, and decide for ourselves what the public interest requires of the press in the interest of truth, and how far these requirements are being met.

The public interest requires that all unsigned news on the news pages — all news, in other words, which does not bear its own tag, to warn the reader that he is seeing the facts through the spectacles of somebody’s personal opinion — shall be presented as accurately and impartially as is humanly possible. On the editorial page every newspaper proprietor or editor has a right to state his views as forcibly as he wishes; and I for one do not believe, as some people do, that it is necessary for editorials to be individually signed, provided the names of the proprietor and editor are regularly printed somewhere in the paper; for editorials are usually, to some extent, the work of a group rather than of an individual; and in any case, the fact that they appear on the editorial page is fair warning that they are to be regarded as comment rather than as sheer fact.

Papers also have an unquestionable right to commission correspondents to include in their dispatches their personal view of events, provided these dispatches are signed. The imperative thing is that what the press presents as fact shall be fact, given correctly and without bias.

Bias is all the more completely the enemy of truth on account of the slovenly way in which most of us are accustomed to read the papers. For every report that we read through thoroughly and weigh for ourselves, checking the generalizations and summaries in headline and leading paragraph by the details which follow, there are ten that we only glance at. Usually wo carry away nothing but the dim impression that Mr. X has done something disastrous, or that Governor Y has made another fine speech; we retain the bias, and little else. If you doubt that you yourself skim the paper in this way, try handing it to somebody else after you have finished, and making him examine you on the contents of an important article. You will probably soon realize how vaguely most of your news-reading