Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/558

 ay 3, 1921.

a series of events, running through several days, attended by thousands of persons from different sections of the country and by delegates from foreign countries ? Such reports, to those who have taken an interested and sympathetic part in the events, must often bring depression and discouragement. If the reporters are instructed to send in “ snappy stuff,” the instructions are assuredly literally obeyed. With every possible opportunity to gain information in advance and at the time, often no preparation whatever has apparently been made, and the reports show not only ignorance of the events to be com memorated but a general rudimentary ignorance. Errors in numerable are made due to a failure to understand the signi

ficance of the event, to a lack of knowledge of local conditions easily obtainable, and to a perverted notion that every report must be “ a good story .” Attempts at reconstruction from

such reports encounter at one end innumerable but needless inaccuracies of statement, exaggeration, flippancy , frivolity, sensationalism, and many positive errors of omission and com

mission. At the other end, they encounter a failure to see the general plan of the events, the unifying principle that binds together all parts of it, the subordination of the individual to the whole and the spirit of co-operation that has made it a success, and a lack of appreciation of the dignity and seriousness of the occasion. The resulting report, in spite of a straining after

the spectacular, is a prosaic, unbalanced account that might well serve as an illustration of Buckle’s “ golden age of successful mediocrity.” It fails to provide material for an adequate re construction of an important series of events, but in so doing

it unconsciously records the tendency of even reputable journals to encourage reporters to add their own personal views to their reports of news; it records a belief on the part of the press, that

the reading public wishes only to be amused and that therefore it must be amused at any cost; it is an unconscious kodak of the standards of that part of the press that “ follows the crowd,” that " gives the public what the public wants " and that thereby fails to interpret the times in which it lives. The analysis of the periodical press that has been made, it

is hoped, may indicate that the actual value of the newspaper