Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/197



The student of history therefore finds one great source of information used by the press to be the various news-collecting agencies; he finds that these necessarily differ among themselves as regards their authoritativeness and that this must be gauged by their own form of organization and the measure of their dependence on external authority. Even if the news received

from

the source is free from suspicion, the press itself may

distort it by partial omissions, pervert its meaning by the use

of exaggerated headlines, and embroider simple facts beyond recognition. Happily, while all this is possible , the materializa tion of these dangers seldom occurs. In the great news-collecting

agencies, organized on a co -operative basis and serving the best representatives of the press, is found one of the most reliable parts of the newspaper.